variable variables bad practice to use?

Question

I have just read the post is it bad practice to use variable variables in php in the following fashion? explaining why they are bad to use in with classes however, i have to create dynamic variables to be sorted

for example:

$array =
array(
 array("Line 1","Line 2","Line 3"),
 array("Line 1","Line 2","Line 3"),
 array("Line 1","Line 2","Line 3"),
)
$i = 1;
foreach($array as $item){
 $string = "Item".$i;
 $$string = $item[0]."some code".$item[1]."some code".$item[2]."some code";
}

i know that there will only ever be 3 array values in each secondary array and there will only ever be 3 arrays.

is there a way to achieve this using "better practice" code? or a simpler way which i have overlooked?

thank you for your time in advance

Answer 1

This should do it just fine:

$newArray = array_map(function (array $item) {
    return $item[0]."some code".$item[1]."some code".$item[2]."some code";
}, $array);

var_dump($newArray);

I don't see where separate variables are needed at all.

If you just continuously number variables dynamically ($item1, $item2 etc.), you're trying to hold a dynamic number of elements. That's exactly what arrays are for: $items[0], $items[1] etc.