Operators and "dots"

[pcbrainbuster]

Hello all ,

As some of you most likely know I am a complete begginer to PHP.

I need some help understanding how operators and the dots for the echo works.

Here is an example of how I have read of doing it -

<?php
$txt1 = "Hello";
$txt2 = "Fool";
echo $txt1." ".$txt2;
?>

But I read about operators in JavaScript and completely understand it, can you replace the dots above with + like this -

<?php
$txt1 = "Hello";
$txt2 = "Fool";
echo $txt1 + " " + $txt2;
?>

Thanks !

[Blake]

No, that won't work. The dot in php (when dealing with strings) does the same thing as the plus in JavaScript.

[mburt]

No, the + operator in PHP would try to parse the character as an operator not an assigment to a string.
It's like saying (mathematically)
Hello + Fool = ?

That's where PHP messes up, so fortunately they have a way around it . The genius' at PHP decided to use a different character, and as Blake said, the "." sign.

[Twey]

No. Javascript overloads the + operator to mean both addition (of numbers) and concatenation (of strings). However, PHP has two separate operators, + for addition and . for concatenation. The two are not interchangeable.

[mburt]

No. Javascript overloads the + operator to mean both addition (of numbers) and concatenation (of strings).

Which I think is more confusing in the long run, and less effecient. Having to use String() all the time to convert numbers to strings is just a nussiance (spelling?).

[Twey]

Hmm? One very rarely has to convert numbers to strings in JS, and certainly not for the purposes of concatenation.

[mburt]

In a script I used a while back I used setAttribute, and IE didn't like numbers in the function:

setAttribute("src",num+".gif");

so I did

setAttribute("src",String(num)+".gif";

[Twey]

That should make no difference at all... num should be type-coerced into a string.

[mburt]

Well, it didn't work before String() and did after.

[pcbrainbuster]

LOL operator....operator, here is my order ,

But anyway mburt here is an example of + in JavaScript -

<script type="text/javascript">
var txt1 = "Hello"
var txt2 = 123
document.write(txt1+" "+txt2)
</script>

Anyway i once read that the default language for php in vbscript and i also read that javascript can replace that - please tell me how
(i may be mistaking this with another server language)