Assigning value to auto increment variable

hi all

first post and hopefully someone can help this has been doing my head in for last 24 hours , decide to appeal to the wonderweb to see if I can find someone much smarter than myself willing to point us in the right direction.

Any idea on how to assign value to a auto increment variable inside a loop .lets say for example


$letter="a";
for($i=1;$i<=5;$i++){
$letter = $i;
$letter++;
}

i want output in this way;

$a=1
$b=2
$c=3
$d=4
$e=5

or any alternative to this?

Thanks in advance

The real question is, "what is your goal, or purpose for doing this?"

Technically it can be done, but programming is based on "best principles",
making a script fast, efficient, and a non-burden for a processor.

What you might actually be thinking about is an array ...

$a[0] ... to .... $a[1000]

That would be 1001 unique values (variables) that are easily manipulated.

Tell us what your goal is, or what you're attempting to do.



.

edit.

sorry, i got it the wrong way round:

this is better:


<?php
$letters = array("","a","b","c","d","e");
for($i=1;$i<=5;$i++){
$$letters[$i] = $i;
}
echo '<br>a = '.$a;
echo '<br>b = '.$b;
echo '<br>c = '.$c;
echo '<br>d = '.$d;
echo '<br>e = '.$e;
?>

Maybe you're talking about "variable variables"?
http://php.net/manual/en/language.variables.variable.php

Should they be used?
In my opinion, never.



.

I agree; I've yet to find a situation where variable variables are a requirement and there is always a way around them. They are more of a headache in keeping track of them.
Use arrays. If you can be clearer on the actual purpose, we can make better examples. Given what you have done here, a simple:

$aKeys = range("a", "e");
$aValues = range(1, count($aKeys));
$aResult = array_combine($aKeys, $aValues);

Would generate an associative array of the letters with the numbers.

thanks to fou-lu for that as i have learnt about array_flip(); today lol :) (by googleing range())