Illegal string offset Warning PHP

Illegal string offset Warning PHP

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I get a strange PHP error after updating my php version to 5.4.0-3. I have this array: Array ( [host] => 127.0.0.1 [port] => 11211 ) When I try to access it like this I get strange warnings print $memcachedConfig['host']; print $memcachedConfig['port']; Warning: Illegal string offset 'host' in .... Warning: Illegal string offset 'port' in ... I really don't want to just edit my php.ini and re-set the error level. Thanks for any help! php  warnings share improve this question edited Jun 24 '12 at 9:02 hakre 124k 22 181 342 asked  Mar 26 '12 at 8:55 thesonix 680 1 7 12

11   Obviously $memcachedConfig is not that array. Show var_dump($memcachedConfig); –  zerkms  Mar 26 '12 at 8:56  just a guess, but have you tried using actual strings as keys? I mean, ['host'] => '127.0.0.1' –  maialithar  Mar 26 '12 at 8:57  Shouldn't it be ['host'] => '127.0.0.1' etc. ? –  luukes  Mar 26 '12 at 8:58 1   It means the keys does not exist. Check your variable with var_export($memcachedConfig) just before the "print". –  Skrol29  Mar 26 '12 at 8:59  1   What most people missed is this doesn't exactly mean the index doesn't exist -- that produces "undefined index" message. This is a different error. –  grantwparks  Jul 19 '14 at 6:24 show 3 more comments

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up vote 18 down vote accepted	Please try this way.... I have tested this code.... It works.... $memcachedConfig = array("host" => "127.0.0.1","port" => "11211"); print_r ($memcachedConfig['host']); share improve this answer edited Jun 28 '12 at 11:41 Emir Akaydın 4,269 1 16 43 answered  Mar 26 '12 at 9:00 letsnurture 1,208 9 18
	Found it. Thanks for your help. var_dump helped. I loaded the array from a config file, which had the strage content like this. array(2) { ["host"]=> string(9) "127.0.0.1" ["port"]=> string(5) "11211" } string(5) "m_prefix" PHP 5.4 now $xx['host'] threw the warning correctly. –  thesonix  Mar 26 '12 at 9:17 add a comment

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The error Illegal string offset 'whatever' in... generally means: you're trying to use a string as a full array. That is actually possible since strings are able to be treated as arrays of single characters in php. So you're thinking the $var is an array with a key, but it's just a string with standard numeric keys, for example: $fruit_counts = array('apples'=>2, 'oranges'=>5, 'pears'=>0); echo $fruit_counts['oranges']; // echoes 5 $fruit_counts = "an unexpected string assignment"; echo $fruit_counts['oranges']; // causes illegal string offset error You can see this in action here: http://ideone.com/fMhmkR For those who come to this question trying to translate the vagueness of the error into something to do about it, as I was. share improve this answer edited Aug 20 '14 at 16:55 answered  Nov 28 '13 at 17:06 Kzqai 9,832 12 70 97

2   It's good to know this! –  alexcristea  Mar 10 '14 at 7:41 3   I bet it can be shown this was the reason the original problem happened. Most comments incorrectly assume "undefined index" was the error. –  grantwparks  Jul 19 '14 at 6:28 add a comment

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TL;DR You're trying to access a string as if it were an array, with a key that's a string. string will not understand that. In code we can see the problem: "hello"["hello"]; // PHP Warning: Illegal string offset 'hello' in php shell code on line 1 "hello"[0]; // No errors. array("hello" => "val")["hello"]; // No errors. This is *probably* what you wanted. In depth Let's see that error: Warning: Illegal string offset 'port' in ... What does it say? It says we're trying to use the string 'port' as an offset for a string. Like this: $a_string = "string"; // This is ok: echo $a_string[0]; // s echo $a_string[1]; // t echo $a_string[2]; // r // ... // !! Not good: echo $a_string['port']; // !! Warning: Illegal string offset 'port' in ... What causes this? For some reason you expected an array, but you have a string. Just a mix-up. Maybe your variable was changed, maybe it never was an array, it's really not important. What can be done? If we know we should have an array, we should do some basic debugging to determine why we don't have an array. If we don't know if we'll have an array or string, things become a bit trickier. What we can do is all sorts of checking to ensure we don't have notices, warnings or errors with things like is_array and isset or array_key_exists: $a_string = "string"; $an_array = array('port' => 'the_port'); if (is_array($a_string) && isset($a_string['port'])) { // No problem, we'll never get here. echo $a_string['port']; } if (is_array($an_array) && isset($an_array['port'])) { // Ok! echo $an_array['port']; // the_port } if (is_array($an_array) && isset($an_array['unset_key'])) { // No problem again, we won't enter. echo $an_array['unset_key']; } // Similar, but with array_key_exists if (is_array($an_array) && array_key_exists('port', $an_array)) { // Ok! echo $an_array['port']; // the_port } There are some subtle differences between isset and array_key_exists. For example, if the value of $array['key'] is null, isset returns false. array_key_exists will just check that, well, the key exists. share improve this answer edited Jan 15 at 9:03 answered  Feb 19 '15 at 15:21 Jon Surrell 2,201 1 18 29

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up vote 1 down vote	In my case i change mysql_fetch_assoc to mysql_fetch_array and solve. It takes 3 days to solve :-( and the other versions of my proyect run with fetch assoc. share improve this answer answered  Jun 5 '15 at 18:56 Pichitron 41 1
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Just to expand on this a little. Same error, different issue. I was simply checking against a value that didn't exist as I had a mixture of single and multidimensional arrays within a larger array. So, when I checked against $array['key'] it threw an 'Illegal String' error on the items that had no associated ['key']. Just for reference. share improve this answer answered  Sep 8 '14 at 13:54 rob_was_taken 94 7

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up vote 0 down vote	Before to check the array, do this: if(!is_array($memcachedConfig)) $memcachedConfig = array(); share improve this answer answered  Dec 4 '14 at 11:14 dlopezgonzalez 1,670 1 12 22
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