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PHP PHP Arrays and Control Structures PHP Arrays Multidimensional Arrays

arrays structure

I have no idea what an 'illegal type of offset' means. I would be grateful if someone explained to me what it it is and why my code cannot be executed.

index.php
<?php
//edit this array
$contacts = array(
  array("Alena") => 'Alena Holligan', 
  array("Dave") => 'Dave McFarland', 
  array("Treasure") =>'Treasure Porth', 
  array("Andrew") => 'Andrew Chalkley' 
);

echo "<ul>\n";
//$contacts[0] will return 'Alena Holligan' in our simple array of names.
echo "<li>Alena Holligan : alena.holligan@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "<li>Dave McFarland : dave.mcfarland@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "<li>Treasure Porth : treasure.porth@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "<li>Andrew Chalkley : andrew.chalkley@teamtreehouse.com</li>\n";
echo "</ul>\n";

1 Answer

You're using arrays as keys to your associative array. Seems like that's not allowed in php.

$contacts = [
    [5, 6] => 3

];

var_dump($contacts);

^ produces the same error

Task 1 can be rewritten like this: $contacts should be an array of associative arrays. Each associative array within $contacts should consist of a 'name' key that has the value of the person's name.

$example = ['key' => 'value']

^ example of an associative array that has string values for both the key and value