What does .= does1

[divinedesigns1]

ok i been trying to get this which is weird because it just combine 2 things together, so what does .= really do and what does it really mean? i mean wouldnt it be easy to just use an = and call it a day? a brief detail would do, im still gonna be reading about it on google

[birbal]

http://in.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.assignment.php its concatenate an operand and then assign it to another.

[thescientist]

no, because they are not the same thing. if they were, it would almost be no point in having them. first you need to understand your operators. = is the assignment operator. is the contactenation operator I assume you know what each one does on it's own.

$x = 5;echo($x); //5 $x = 'hello';$y = 'world';$z = $x . ' ' . $y;echo($z);  //hello world

.= means to concatentate what is on the right of the assignment operator to what is on the left of the assignment operator

$x = 'hello';$x .= ' world';echo($x); //hello world

Edited June 13, 2012 by thescientist

[divinedesigns1]

ok, thank you

[Guest So Called]

$a .= $b; is just shorthand for $a = $a . $b;

[astralaaron]

$a .= $b; is just shorthand for $a = $a . $b;

This would have made my head spin when I was just beginning

[Guest So Called]

There's also the following: +=-=*=/=&=%= http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_operators.asp