I'm working on an existing code base and got back an object with an attribute that starts with a number, which I can see if I call print_r on the object.
Let's say it's $Beeblebrox->2ndhead. When I try to access it like that, I get an error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_LNUMBER, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or '{' or '$'
How can I get that attribute?
What about this :
$Beeblebrox->{'2ndhead'}
Actually, you can do this for pretty much any kind of variable -- even for ones that are not class properties.
For example, you could think about a variable's name that contains spaces ; the following syntax will work :
${"My test var"} = 10;
echo ${"My test var"};
Even if, obviously, you would not be able to do anything like this :
$My test var = 10;
echo $My test var;
No idea how it's working internally, though... And after a bit of searching, I cannot find anything about this in the PHP manual.
Only thing I can find about {} and variables is in here : Variable parsing -- but not quite related to the current subject...
But here's an article that shows a couple of other possiblities, and goes farther than the examples I posted here : PHP Variable Names: Curly Brace Madness
And here's another one that gives some additionnal informations about the way those are parsed : PHP grammar notes
I actually found out the answer from a coworker before I asked this, but couldn't find it on Google, so I wanted to post it here in case others have the same problem.
I can access that attribute like so:
$Beeblebrox->{'2ndhead'}
It's not really legal to have an attribute or variable that begins with a number, but somehow a dynamic reference like this makes it possible. Seems like a weird loophole in the language to me.
You can do something like this too:
$aux = '2ndhead';
$Beeblebrox->$aux;
