Illegal string offset Warning PHP

You're trying to access a string as if it were an array, with a key that's a string. string will not understand that. In code we can see the problem:

"hello"["hello"];
// PHP Warning:  Illegal string offset 'hello' in php shell code on line 1

"hello"[0];
// No errors.

array("hello" => "val")["hello"];
// No errors. This is *probably* what you wanted.

---

In depth

Let's see that error:

Warning: Illegal string offset 'port' in ...

What does it say? It says we're trying to use the string 'port' as an offset for a string. Like this:

$a_string = "string";

// This is ok:
echo $a_string[0]; // s
echo $a_string[1]; // t
echo $a_string[2]; // r
// ...

// !! Not good:
echo $a_string['port'];
// !! Warning: Illegal string offset 'port' in ...

What causes this?

For some reason you expected an array, but you have a string. Just a mix-up. Maybe your variable was changed, maybe it never was an array, it's really not important.

What can be done?

If we know we should have an array, we should do some basic debugging to determine why we don't have an array. If we don't know if we'll have an array or string, things become a bit trickier.

What we can do is all sorts of checking to ensure we don't have notices, warnings or errors with things like is_array and isset or array_key_exists:

$a_string = "string";
$an_array = array('port' => 'the_port');

if (is_array($a_string) && isset($a_string['port'])) {
    // No problem, we'll never get here.
    echo $a_string['port'];
}

if (is_array($an_array) && isset($an_array['port'])) {
    // Ok!
    echo $an_array['port']; // the_port
}

if (is_array($an_array) && isset($an_array['unset_key'])) {
    // No problem again, we won't enter.
    echo $an_array['unset_key'];
}


// Similar, but with array_key_exists
if (is_array($an_array) && array_key_exists('port', $an_array)) {
    // Ok!
    echo $an_array['port']; // the_port
}

There are some subtle differences between isset and array_key_exists. For example, if the value of $array['key'] is null, isset returns false. array_key_exists will just check that, well, the key exists.

The error Illegal string offset 'whatever' in... generally means: you're trying to use a string as a full array.

That is actually possible since strings are able to be treated as arrays of single characters in php. So you're thinking the $var is an array with a key, but it's just a string with standard numeric keys, for example:

$fruit_counts = array('apples'=>2, 'oranges'=>5, 'pears'=>0);
echo $fruit_counts['oranges']; // echoes 5
$fruit_counts = "an unexpected string assignment";
echo $fruit_counts['oranges']; // causes illegal string offset error

You can see this in action here: http://ideone.com/fMhmkR

For those who come to this question trying to translate the vagueness of the error into something to do about it, as I was.

Please try this way.... I have tested this code.... It works....

$memcachedConfig = array("host" => "127.0.0.1","port" => "11211");
print_r($memcachedConfig['host']);