On Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:48:27 +0000, MRAB wrote: > On 2013-02-26 14:26, Chris Angelico wrote: >> On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 12:56 AM, Roy Smith <r...@panix.com> wrote: >>> When people ask PHP questions, the questions tend to be phrased as >>> "what do I type to get X", and the answers come back that way too. >>> The forums are full of, "I had the same problem. Somebody told me to >>> do this. I don't really understand it, but it worked for me and maybe >>> it'll work for you too". >> >> A problem that's majorly exacerbated by the myriad ways of doing some >> things, with some of those ways deprecated and others theoretically >> plausible but hopelessly impractical. >> >> Here's an actual example that came up today at work. Suppose you have a >> user-provided string that's supposed to contain a URL, and you need to >> ensure that it doesn't have a trailing slash, so you can later add >> "/foo" or "/bar". (Or alternatively, ensure that it DOES have a >> trailing slash. Either works.) Start the timer, go find out how to do >> it. Assume you are broadly familiar with PHP, and know how to do the >> basics of string handling, and are competent at searching the web. >> Ready? Go! >> >> I'll wait for you to come back. >> >> ... Okay, some of you are back now. Just giving the stragglers time to >> finish losing their marbles... >> >> Alright. Here's what I found in a recreation of today's search. Google >> search: php last character of string >> >> http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php -- okay, so I can use >> substr, but not string indexing, to find out what the last character is >> -- "Returns the extracted part of string; or FALSE on failure, or an >> empty string." What kind of failures result in FALSE, and what kind in >> an empty string? >> > [snip] > The page http://php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php says: > > Description > string substr ( string $string , int $start [, int $length ] ) > > OK. It then goes on to say: > > Parameters > string > The input string. Must be one character or longer. > > What? The input string can't be an empty string?
Huh, this is PHP. You're lucky it doesn't say: "The input string. Must be one character or longer, except for the case- insensitive string 'something-magical-happens-here'." *wink* -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
