What does the following command do in PHP?
. $string // ($string is something which I declared in the program)
Taken alone, this is a syntax error. The dot .
is the concatenation operator that converts its arguments to strings and concatenates them. For example,
<?php
$string = "x";
$s = 42 . $string;
// $s is now "42x"
Your statement would throw back an error.
The "dot" is a string concatenator. That is, it helps you to combine strings together into another string.
Example. $full = $part1 . $part2;
Concerning getting started: That's a difficult question. PHP.NET will be your functional looking site. Google-ing just about anything on PHP will direct you there. I'd look at getting a localhost setup of PHP/MySQL/Apache. If you're on a Windows machine, you can get a WAMP server setup.
This will drastically speed up your development and testing time. Don't try to FTP everything up to a Web server, as this approach will waste away 10-15% of your working time. Work smart - work local.
Find an existing project (Open Source) with a great community and just try to start something. For example, I recently created DogFriendlyOlrando.com based on WordPress. I was curious as to the abilities of WordPress. It was a fun little project and gave me a good understanding of WordPress' capabilities. You'll learn the most from just diving in and doing. Good luck!
Two string operators are available. The first is the concatenation operator ('.') that returns its right and left argument concatenation. Second is the concatenation operator of assignment ('.='), which adds the right-hand argument to the left-hand argument. For further details, please read Assignment Operators
.
is equivalent to a+
in C++ or JavaScript, if that helps. – Elijah Mock