PHP web hosting - PHP Tutorial 1

3.1 The WHILE Loop

The WHILE loop is one of the most useful commands in PHP. It is also quite easy to set up and use. A WHILE loop will execute a piece of code until a certain condition is met

Example :

$i = 5;
$x = 0;
while ($x < $i) {
echo "Looping.....";
++$x;
}

The first two lines are just initializing the variables, variable $i inidicate the number of times you want to repeat the code. The $x variable is the one which will count the number of times the code has been executed. After these is the WHILE line. This tells the computer to repeat the code while $x is less than $i (or to repeat it until $x is equal to $i). This is followed by the code to be executed which is enclosed in { }.

3.2 Arrays

Arrays are common to many programing languages. They are special variables which can hold more than one value, each stored in its own numbered 'space' in the array.

Setting Up An Array

$names[0] = 'Peter';
$names[1] = 'Paul';
$names[2] = 'Mary';
$names[3] = 'Issac';
$names[4] = 'David';

Reading From An Array

Reading from an array is just the same as putting information in. All you have to do is to refer to the array and the number of the piece of data in the array. So if I wanted to print out the third name I could use the code:

echo "The third name is $names[2]";

Which would output:

The third name is Mary