Question

I’m trying to make a general if for some variables that i have in my database. Let’s say that we have the next variables and values:

$var1 = "abc";
$var2 = "n/a";
$var3 = "das";
$var4 = "n/a";

My if statement must include all these variables, check which variables contain “n/a” and for every variable that contain “n/a” the script must make another variable $var21 = "Not Available". Is that possible?

Answer 1

I’d not use variable variables, just due to personal preference. If you’re masochistic, you can certainly try.

I’d create an extra hash instead. This would remove the need for an if-statement as well. 🙂

$descriptions = array(
    "n/a" => "Not Available",
    "brb" => "Be Right Back",
    "iee" => "I'm easily extendable"
);

Then when you need the text for a particular key you can just type

$descriptive_text = $descriptions[$var1];

Updated:

To set it to the original if there is no value in $descriptions, do the following:

$descriptive_text = (is_null($descriptions[$var1])) ? $var1 : $descriptions[$var1];