Warning: Illegal string offset 'root'

Question

I am having this error with php. The error is "Warning: Illegal string offset 'root' " this is the actual code on the line

$root = $atts['root'];

any help would be appreciated

Answer 1

In PHP, the $var[$index] syntax works with both arrays and with strings . With an array, this will return the element at index $index in array $var ( $index can either be a string, meaning $var is an associative array, or an integer, meaning it is a normal array (I'm sure there's a better term for it but I'm not familiar).

With a string, $index (called an offset in this case) can only be an integer, and will return the character at position $index in the string. So if you have $var = 'this is my string'; , then $var[2] would return the letter 'i' from "this" (remember that indeces start at 0 for both arrays and strings).

So in this case, it is clear that you are expecting $atts to be an array, but it is in fact a string. Because of this you cannot retrieve an index from another string ('root'), rather only an integer. For this reason, you are getting the error, which pretty much sums up what I wrote above. Using a string as an index, or an offset, for another string, is illegal (you can only use integers).

Without seeing more of your code I won't be able to tell why $atts is a string and not an array as you expect, but this will hopefully help you understand why you are getting that error.