The main assignment operator is ‘=’, which basically assigns a value on the right to a variable on the left. If you think this is the same as an equal sign in mathematics, don’t! Think of it as a ‘assigned to’ so whatever is on the right is assigned to the left.

Here’s a simple example:

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// this example assigns the number 6 to the variable 'apples'
$apples = 6;

There are a variety of ‘combined operators’ for all the binary arithmetic, array union and string operators that allows you to use a value in an expression and then assign its value to the result of that expression.

Here are the combined operators:

+= -= *= /= .= %= &= |= ^= <<= >>=

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// Using *= assignment
$a = 3;
$a *= 6; //is the same as doing $a = $a * 6. $a will be 18.
 
// Using .= assignment
$b = 'Hello ';
$b .= ' There!'; // is the same as doing $b = $b . 'There!';

The rest of the combined operators are used in the same way.

• PHP Operators: Maths
• Introducing PHP Variables
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• Using regular expressions to extract content
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This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 4:58 pm