[thelist] 404 hack: thanks for a great idea!

[Ben Henick]

The past week, I've been building a Weblog:

http://www.io.com/persist1/log.php

I struggled over how to give each entry its own URL until this morning,
when the content-negotiation method used on evolt.org came to mind.

Putting the functionality together was a snap - or at least as much a snap
as it could be, given that until a week ago I'd done as little of my own
PHP as I thought I could get away with at the time.

So, to Dan and anyone else who feels they deserve the credit:  thanks.

<tip type="PHP arrays vs. JavaScript arrays" author="Ben Henick">

While in JavaScript arrays can often be accessed by index:

This_Array[3] = "whatever";

or by key (especially in the DOM tree):

document.images["Nav3"] = "whatever.gif";

in PHP, many of the arrays you'll find yourself working with are not
nearly so versatile.

It's still easy in PHP to retrieve the length of an array, regardless of
its type:

i < count($this_array);

...but you'll find yourself working with while loops far more frequently
because many defined functions return arrays by key and not by index:

while(list($current_key,$current_entry) = each($this_array))
{ ... }

</tip>

...for what it's worth.  YMMV...


-- 
Ben Henick
Web Author At-Large
http://www.io.com/persist1/
persist1 at io.com

"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"
"I think so, Brain, but... (snort) no, no, it's too stupid."
"We will disguise ourselves as a cow."
"Oh!" (giggles) "That was it exactly!"