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Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2012 17:43:00 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
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Subject: Re: Support negative indexes for arrays and strings
From: slevy1@pipeline.com

The idea was originally proposed by Marc Easen who created a patch and asked for help with putting together an RFC.  I have yet to see a formal proposal but on the list Easen modified his idea so that it should apply to strings alone.  With that in mind, would it really cause problems to have code like this:

$string = "Roses are red";
$string[-3] = "R";  // modifying $string[10]
echo $string; // Roses are Red

The negative indexing provides a pleasurable way to easily access part of a string; it's simple and should be fast, too.

I think Easen's proposal is laudatory and I for one would like to see it happen for PHP and provide users with more ease and satisfaction in working with the language.

SL