# Error message for this line of code

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/error-message-for-this-line-of-code/265163>\
**Category:** programming\
**Created:** [July 5, 2008, 2:25am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/error-message-for-this-line-of-code/265163 "2008-07-05T02:25:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Pherank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@Pherank](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Pherank)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 2:25am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/error-message-for-this-line-of-code/265163/1 "2008-07-05T02:25:02Z")

</div>

I’ve been receiving an error message for the following PHP 4 code:

```auto

    $sql = "SELECT * FROM ml_users " .
        "WHERE user_id='" . $_GET['u'] . "';";
    $result = mysql_query($sql,$conn);
    $row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
    $firstname = $row['firstname'];
    $e-mail = $row['e-mail'];

```

```auto
[05-Jul-2008 01:28:39] PHP Parse error: parse error, unexpected '=' in /_test/mailings/user_transact.php on line 106

```

Line 106 is

```auto
$e-mail = $row['e-mail'];

```

Can anyone tell me what the issue is?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sekasi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5f8ce5/32.png) [@sekasi](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/sekasi)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 2:36am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/error-message-for-this-line-of-code/265163/2 "2008-07-05T02:36:47Z")

</div>

replace $e-mail with $email

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Pherank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@Pherank](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/Pherank)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 8:31pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/error-message-for-this-line-of-code/265163/3 "2008-07-05T20:31:50Z")

</div>

So PHP doesn’t like the hyphen in a variable name?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vishalraj9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/db5fbb/32.png) [@vishalraj9](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/vishalraj9)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2008, 7:50pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/error-message-for-this-line-of-code/265163/4 "2008-07-07T19:50:43Z")

</div>

Probably not. You can use - as a delimiter in some cases. You can, however, use underscrore.

Try: $e\_mail = $row[‘e\_mail’];

Ya, you will need to change the field name to e\_mail too. Try it out & let us know.

Hope it helps. Good luck!