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Creating a True Cross-Browser Drop Shadow In PHP it is common to join variables to text and/or HTML tags to produce a complete element: this is referred to as concatenation. The concatenation operator is the period (.) character.
You can concatenate the value of two variables to create a value for a third:
- $firstName = “Dudley”;
- $lastName = “Storey”;
- $fullName = $firstName.$lastName;
In the example above, $fullName contains the value “DudleyStorey”. If you want a space in the value of $fullName, you can concatenate the variables together with a physical space:
- $fullName = $firstName.” “.$lastName;
Naturally you can also echo concatenated strings with variables:
- echo “Your name is “.$firstName.” “.$lastName;
Note that joining a number with a string creates a string:
- $var1 = 23;
- $var2 = “skidoo”;
- $var3 = $var1.$var2;
The value of $var3 is “23skidoo”.
It is common to “build up” the value of a single variable through concatenation, especially when the individual pieces are fairly long; for example, when composing an email to be sent via PHP.
- $test = “This is a long “;
- $test .= “string of text pieces ”;
- $test .= “all joined together.”;
(Note the use of spaces).
At the end of this process the value of $test will be “This is a long string of text pieces all joined together.”
Haha, that is actually incredibly clever.
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