How does this assignment work?

Question

I don't know whether something similar has been asked.Can someone explain how the assignment works in the following cases:

$a = "1"; $a[$a] = "2"; echo $a;

This gives output : 12

$a = "1"; $a[$a] = 2; echo $a;

This gives output : 12

$a = 1; $a[$a] = 2; echo $a;

This gives output: E_WARNING : type 2 -- Cannot use a scalar value as an array -- at line 6 1

Answer 1

The first two examples you have provided are using strings. Strings can be treated as an array and characters accessed by their integer positions.

In the third example, you're assigning $a as an integer which has no character positions to reference.