Question

I am confused and couldn’t figure out the difference between these two lines!!

echo "<li><a href='category-".$row['id'].".php' >".$row['name']."</a></li>";

The first one echos categories I displayed in a home page. It works fine and I don’t have to create the category.php file.

echo "<li><a href='category-.php".$row['id']."' >".$row['name']."</a></li>";

But the second code it tells me file doesn’t exist.

So my question is, why the first code doesn’t require the file but the second code does?

Answer 1

It makes sense why the second file doesn’t exist – look at the filename you’re constructing:

category-.php<int>

Unless you have a file called category- with an extension that matches \.php\d+, this doesn’t make any sense.

The first line makes perfect sense:

"category-".$row["id"].".php"

This would result in filenames like category-1.php, or category-2.php.