Question

What I am doing that I want to generate a list based on how many items are in an array, so I have counted the items and loop over them, create a number based var and construct a string $var which contains $a1,$a2…. and assigns the $var to list list($var)

and tried to access $a1 but it gives me the error “Undefined variable: a1”

Is there any other way to do it?

Here is my code:

$arr = array('1','2','3');
$listsize = count($arr);
$var='';
for($i=1;$i<=$listsize;$i++){
        $var.='$a'.$i;
        if($i!=$listsize){
            $var.=',';
        }
}

list($var) = $arr;
echo $a1;

Answer 1

What you are looking for is variable variables.

In PHP, you can dynamically assign variables names (not just values).

Here is an example:

$foo = "Hello" . 1;

# In this line, I am taking the value of the variable $foo (Hello1) and
# using that as as a variable name. This is equivalent to
# $Hello1 = "World", except the variable is dynamic (hence variable variables).

$$foo = "World";

print $Hello1; # This will print World