PHP $string{0} vs. $string[0];

Question

In PHP you can access characters of strings in a few different ways, one of which is substr(). You can also access the Nth character in a string with curly or square braces, like so:

$string = 'hello';

echo $string{0}; // h
echo $string[0]; // h

My question is, is there a benefit of one over the other? What's the difference between {} and []?

Thanks.

score 51 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 21 '22 at 16:04

51

use $string[0], the other method (braces) has been removed in PHP 8.0.

For strings:

Accessing characters within string literals using the {} syntax has been deprecated in PHP 7.4. This has been removed in PHP 8.0.

And for arrays:

Prior to PHP 8.0.0, square brackets and curly braces could be used interchangeably for accessing array elements (e.g. $array[42] and $array{42} would both do the same thing in the example above). The curly brace syntax was deprecated as of PHP 7.4.0 and no longer supported as of PHP 8.0.0.

edited Jun 21 '22 at 16:04

IMSoP

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answered Dec 02 '08 at 19:54

Owen

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Will the use of {} as a method of evaluation be removed also? E.g ${$dynamic_object_name}->doStuff() – Jay Dec 02 '08 at 20:08
nope, i believe their goal is to just standardize accessing strings as array. – Owen Dec 02 '08 at 20:10
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For future reference I'd like to note that the line about curly syntax being deprecated has since been removed from the documentation about 3 years ago which means it's not going to be deprecated any time soon, if ever. – Webmut May 15 '13 at 23:00
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@Owen: PHP also uses `{}` for array access. It always did. (Just saying) – hakre May 27 '13 at 08:28
Downvoted as v.out of date. PHP6 never happened. Pacerier's answer is much more accurate now. – John Hunt Jan 24 '18 at 15:22
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This answer is technically correct, however it should be updated to reflect the PHP7 reality, i.e. `$string{0}` is deprecated in 7.4 - https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate_curly_braces_array_access – aland Oct 11 '21 at 22:07

score 21 · Answer 2 · edited May 13 '19 at 07:22

There is no difference. Owen's answer is outdated, the latest version of PHP Manual no longer states that it is deprecated §:

Characters within strings may be accessed and modified by specifying the zero-based offset of the desired character after the string using square array brackets, as in $str[42]. Think of a string as an array of characters for this purpose. [...]

Note: Strings may also be accessed using braces, as in $str{42}, for the same purpose.

However it seems that more people/projects use [], and that many people don't even know {} is possible. If you need to share your code publicly or with people who don't know the curly brace syntax, it may be beneficial to use [].

UPDATED : accessing string characters with {} is deprecated, use [] instead.

I prefer curly braces because it makes it visually clear that I'm accessing a char from a string variable, not a value from an array. On some level, that's the same thing, but on the code level, it makes it visually nicer. — l008com, Mar 21 '19 at 01:41

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 13 '16 at 03:10

Yes, there's no difference. This language quirk has some history...

Originally, the curly brace syntax was intended to replace the square bracket syntax which was going to be deprecated:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010614144731/http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.substr.

Later that policy was reversed, and the square brackets syntax was preferred instead:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060702080821/http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.substr

and even later, the curly braces one was going to be deprecated:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080612153808/http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.substr

As of this writing, it seems that the deprecation has been withdrawn as well and they are just considered two alternative syntaxes:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160607224929/http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.substr

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 01 '22 at 15:59

Curly brace access was deprecated in PHP 7.4

Array and string offset access using curly braces ¶

The array and string offset access syntax using curly braces is deprecated. Use $var[$idx] instead of $var{$idx}.

PHP 7.4 Deprecated Features, PHP Core

PHP $string{0} vs. $string[0];

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