Hello,
As I'm studying, and learning, PHP, I use certain resources again and again. A few books I've bought, some web sites, this mailing list, and the PHP manual. I've taken the often repeated 'RTFM' to heart, and I attempt to google or RTFM before considering a post to the list with a question, but now I have a question about the manual itself.
I've noticed that most of the replies to the questions on this list, when they refer to a part of the manual, point to the same few sections over and over. Such as arrays, strings, sessions, objects, and a few others.
My question is this, when I'm reading the manual, is just that I should be concentrating on a few sections (and if so, which?), or should I be giving equal attention to all the sections, including some (I suppose) I might never use.
Thoughts?
thanks, William
Well, those are commonly used parts of the language, along with control structures (IF, WHILE, CASE).
Once PHP is installed, familiarity with Chapters 10 through 42 would furnish a really solid grounding.
Then I'd look at the function list and focus on the functions applicable to your particular database and the error handling and logging functions.
After that, it depends on your programming experience, as how one thinks in language "a" may be subtly different language "b". Note that there are both directory and file system functions; the separation is logical, but sent me on a worried hunt a couple of years ago. Thus we reach the land of "it depends on what you want or have to do".
In closing, I'd recommend writing little test scripts so that you can do two things:
1. Figure out how to use the various functions and how they behave.
2. Then intentionally break them - knowledge of this behaviour can be just as important.
Alternately, like many, dig out the info as it's needed. The problem with this approach is missing out on new and better ways of doing things, and you don't enrich your toolkit. As for "some (I suppose) I might never use" - just how much time do you WANT to spend with your computer? How do the others in your life feel about that?
Cheers - Miles
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