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For the next week, I'm stuck with a sadly very slow 1-bar EDGE internet connection, so forgive me if I didn't spend quite enough time researching this one, but I just set up a local server for testing code that I would normally test over the internet, and it doesn't seem to be working the same way on my local LAMP install.

The issue is, when I do this:

echo strtolower($_REQUEST['page']);

the result is this:

files

However, when I do this:

$page['name'] = strtolower($_REQUEST['page']);
echo $page['name'];

the result is this:

f

No, that's not a typo, it consistently returns only the first letter of the string. Doing a var_dump($page) will result in string(5) "files", but doing a var_dump($page['name']) will result in string(1) "f". I'm using PHP 5.2.1.

What is going on here?

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5
  • 1
    Are you 100% sure the code you have posted here is identical to what you're actually doing? Commented Aug 31, 2010 at 3:15
  • Where you declared the value of position 'files'? Commented Aug 31, 2010 at 3:16
  • Yes, I literally copied and pasted. Commented Aug 31, 2010 at 3:18
  • Why do a var_dump($page['files'])? Shouldn't you do a var_dump($page['name'])? Commented Aug 31, 2010 at 3:23
  • Yes, that's what I meant. I didn't copy and paste that part, it was actually $page['name']. Commented Aug 31, 2010 at 3:32

3 Answers 3

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You pretty much answered your own question. $page is "files" (as shown by your first var_dump). This could be caused by the deprecated register_globals, or a manual approximation thereof. Given that, 

$page['files']

is "f". This is because non-numeric strings are implicitly converted to 0 (!). You can reproduce this easily with:

$page = 'files';
echo $page['files'];
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3 Comments

I figured it out right before you posted this. Yes, $page was set to files, but I didn't know that. Apparently the issue stems from a PHP setting that was turned on in my local installation but not the remote one which makes it so that if the GET variable "page" is set to files, $page will be set to files as well. Thanks for the help.
@AriX register_globals was on I suppose? Exactly the reason why you always need to initialize your variables properly and turn register_globals off.
Yes, it was register_globals, which I just turned off. I don't know why it was on in the first place - I don't remember turning it on, maybe it came by default with Mac XAMPP? Again, thanks!
2

To sum up: it's a matter of variable declaration. Before using your array, declare it first:

$page = array();

Good luck working with strange server configurations.

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1

Doing a var_dump($page) will result in string(5) "files"

This means the variable $page is a string, not as you seem to expect an array containing a string. You can use array-like offsets on strings as well to return a single character within the string. Through the magic of type casting $string['files'] is equivalent to $string[0], which returns the first character.

Your problem is somewhere where you assign the string to $page, or somewhere after that were you turn it from an array into a single string. The code you provided should work as-is.

I suppose $page is already a string when you assign to $page['name'], so you're actually setting the first character of the string. Try to explicitly declare $page = array().

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1 Comment

Yes, that was the issue - I obviously didn't read the output of var_dump clearly enough to realize that it was not an array as I had thought, and I thought that register_globals was off (as it should be).

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