PHP Advanced Concepts
Construct Tricks
You can use parentheses ' ( ) ' and curly braces ' { } ' 
to group characters together as a unit in PHP.  Look at the following examples:
<?php 
$target = "Electrical Plant";
$oldTargets = array("Electrical Plant", "Military HQ", "Munitions Plant");
$newTargets = array("one"=>"Electrical Plant", "two"=>"Military HQ", "three"=>"Munitions Plant);
echo "We hit the $targets.";  // produces: We hit the .
echo "We hit the $target(s).";  // produces: We hit the Electrical Plant(s).
echo "We hit the ${target}s.";  // produces: We hit the Electrical Plants.
echo "We hit the {$target}s.";  // produces: We hit the Electrical Plants.
echo "We hit the { $target}s.";  // produces: We hit the { Electrical Plant}s.
echo "We hit the $oldTargets[0]s.";  // produces: We hit the Electrical Plants.
echo "We hit the {$oldTargets[1]}s.";  // produces: We hit the Military HQs.
echo "We hit the ".$oldTargets[2]."s.";  // produces: We hit the Munitions Plants.
echo "We hit the $newTargets['one']s.";  // produces: Parse error: ...
echo "We hit the {$newTargets['two']}s.";  // produces: We hit the Military HQs.
echo "We hit the ".$newTargets['three']."s.";  // produces: We hit the Munitions Plants.
echo 5/3+2-1;  // produces: 2.66666666667
echo (5/(3+2))-1;  // produces: 0
 ?> 
Characters within strings may be accessed by specifying the zero-based offset of the desired 
character after the string in curly braces.
 
<?php 
$string = "Duty, Honor, Country";
echo $string{0};   // produces: D
echo $string{strlen($string)-1}; // produces: y
echo $string{2,8};   // produces: Parse error: ...
echo $string{12-4};   // produces: n
 ?> 
 
 
 
 
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