PHP Novice Questions

[deathlord55]

Hello, I would like to keep this thread open to ask questions whenever i get stuck while i'm learning PHP and would really appreciate any help given, since i'm starting out low, my first few questions would probbably be really stupid.

I started going through the W3schools PHP tutorials and got to the while loops section, Since it was pretty short i decided to make things a little bit more complicated for myself but in the end i didn't quiet manage to get it to work, would be nice if someone could point to the right direction of what i was doing wrong.

What i was trying to do was basicly generate a random number and depending on the value of the number, either increment or decrement another variable which is used in the loop to create a luck based loop which could go on forever if lucky (or unlucky). I know it's not a good idea to do create long loops especcialy ones that totally depend on luck but i just wanted to get it to work and see what happens.

This is the code i started with:

 

$i = "2"; 
srand(time()); 
$k = (rand()%3); 
if ("$k =>2") 
{ 
$i++; 
} 
else 
{ 
$i--; 
} 
while ("1<=$i<=9") 
{ 
echo "The number is ". $i . "
"; 
} 

 

This didn't work so i tried to delete the if and try to work myself up so i did this:

 

while ("1<=$i<=9") 
{ 
echo "The number is ". $i . "
"; 
$i++; 
}

 

Which only worked with "" marks in but even after it "worked" it listed all the numbers it possibly can, crashing IE :(.

I tried changing the condition to

 

("$i=>1 && $i<=9")

 

But with the same crashing result as the above.

I'm trying something impossible or i'm just doing stupid mistakes?

Thanks

[a_bertrand]

That's certainly a wrong piece of code :D

$i = 2; 
$k = rand(0,2); 
if ($k ==2) 
{ 
$i++; 
} 
else 
{ 
$i--; 
} 
while (1 <= $i && $i <= 9) 
{ 
echo "The number is ". $i . "
"; 
}

- $i should be a number not a string here....

- srand(time) is not normally needed (http://php.net/manual/en/function.rand.php)

- rand()%3 will return a number between 0 and 2 (inclusive) so your first if could be an == as it will never go above 2....

- Conditions cannot be "inside" a string (double or single quote)

- There is no "in between" condition in PHP however you can merge multiple conditions with && (AND) and || (OR)

So not much was correct... Sorry...

Also, open a new thread for a new problem... Threads with 200 different posts are somewhat annoying.

[deathlord55]

Thanks that worked, some things just can't be learned from a website :(. But thats why i try to do weird stuff when i'm learning codes because once i learn where my mistakes are, next time i know where to look for them.

 

I see your point about lots of posts but i think it would actually be better than creating spam topics ^-^

 

I'm going to continue my learning tommorow.

[a_bertrand]

You are welcome. However I don't agree with you. I learned PHP just by reading the PHP manual (you may find it on php.net). Of course I must admit it wasn't the first programming language for me, so that could have made a difference.

For the thread vs post, a different thread with a wisely choose title will be easier to find back for others. Also reviving a very old thread is not smart generally.

[Zero-Affect]

Thanks that worked, some things just can't be learned from a website :(. But thats why i try to do weird stuff when i'm learning codes because once i learn where my mistakes are, next time i know where to look for them.

Trial and error is a good way ( i most of the time use trial and error but cross reference functions with php.net).

I also disagree, i taught myself PHP from looking at code and visiting php.net 200+ times a day, there is always something new with php and that's mostly what attracts me to it. Good luck with teaching yourself PHP but maybe try some basic languages before hand (HTML).