Hi,

I am new to PHP and cant seem to find a way to parse a concatenated string and variable.

To explain:

I have a database to catalogue a composers works, one of the tables has a list of instruments which I then access to dynamically display on a wep page using checkboxes - if a particular instrument is used in the work then the checkbox is checked.

<?php
$resultInstrument = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM instrumentTbl ORDER BY sort_order");
 if ($myrowInstrument = mysql_fetch_array($resultInstrument)) {
do {
echo $myrowInstrument['instrument'];
echo ": ";
?>

 <input name="<?php echo $myrowInstrument['instrument']; ?>" type="checkbox" value="<?php echo $myrowInstrument['instrument']; ?>">

So far so good.

The problem I am having is when I want to insert the number of instruments used in the work.
<input name="<?php echo $myrowInstrument['instrument']; ?>number" type="text" size="3">

This snipet of code produces a dynamically created form where the user can enter the number of instruments.

Here is a part of the form created from the code above:
<input name="Flutenumber" type="text" size="3">

To process the information in this form I think I need to concatenate $instrument with the string 'number'. the only problem is that PHP reads this literally and the output is just $Flutenumber and not the number actually entered.

Here is the code I have at the moment

$resultInstrument_id = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM instrumentTbl ORDER BY sort_order");

    while ($myrowInstrument_id = mysql_fetch_array($resultInstrument_id))
    {
    $instrument = $myrowInstrument_id['instrument'];

if (strlen ($$instrument !='0'))
  {
//this works fine and gives a list of all the checked instruments
print $$instrument;

//this just outputs the literal interpretation
print "$${$instrument}number";

    }
}

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul.

You may try using the . opperator instead. <?php print $$instrument. ' ' . number ?> you can remove the ' ' if you want. That's only there for an added space.

&lt;&gt;_&lt;&gt;

Thanks for the reply!

actually I have tried several different variations of concat - using . using different quotes and different brackets, all with varied and interesting results, but nothing would actually parse the variable $instrumentnumber it would only print "$Flutenumber" (as an example) to the screen. It should actually print a number.

Very frustrating.

print $$instrument . 'number'; doesn't work???


&lt;&gt;_&lt;&gt;

Yes, but it's not the result I was after.

print $$instrument . 'number';
 will just print $Flutenumber (or whatever instrument is checked) I was hoping to get the actual variable .

If I manually tpye
print $Flutenumber;
I get the value that was entered in the form (the number 2 will be printed if 2 was entered on the form)

It's doing exactly what I tell it to do, just not interpreting the variable.