PHP DELETE immediately after select

Question

I have a PHP server script that SELECTs some data from a MySQL database. As soon as I have the result from mysql_query and mysql_fetch_assoc stored in my own local variables, I want to delete the row I just selected. The problem with this approach is that it seems that PHP has done pass-by-reference to my local variables instead of pass-by-value, and my local variables become undefined after the delete command. Is there anyway to get around this? Here is my code: ``` $query="SELECT id, peerID, name FROM names WHERE peer = $userID AND docID = '$docID' AND seqNo = $nid"; $result = mysql_query($query); if (!$result) self::logError("FAIL:1 getUsersNamesUpdate() query: ".$query."
"); if (mysql_num_rows($result) == 0) return array(); $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result); $result = array(); $result["id"] = $row["id"]; $result["peerID"] = $row["peerID"]; $result["name"] = $row["name"]; $query="DELETE FROM names WHERE id = $result[id];"; $result = mysql_query($query); if (!$result) self::logErro…

Accepted Answer

You are overwriting your `$result` variable with your second statement:

```
$query="DELETE FROM names WHERE id = $result[id];";
$result = mysql_query($query); // result does not contain the array anymore
```

Change the name to something else. It has nothing to do with call-by-reference or such.

Actually, your first assignment of the values is unnecessary as `$row` is already an array:

```
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
$result = array();
$result["id"] = $row["id"];
$result["peerID"] = $row["peerID"];
$result["name"] = $row["name"];
```

You could just do:

```
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
// at the end
return $row;
```

Then you don't even have to change your variable name for the second statement. But consider to use meaningful variable names.

PHP DELETE immediately after select

Solution

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