Can I use a generated variable name in PHP?

Question

I have a bunch a values I would like to add together which are entered into a form. Right now, the form has 11 lines but it could get larger in the future. I can easily add

Answer 1

The concept you're looking for is called a variable variable (at least it's called that in PHP). Here is the official documentation and a useful tutorial. The syntax for a variable variable is a double dollar sign ($$).

Answer 2

Try

$varName = 'pBalance' . $i;
$tempTotal = $tempTotal + $$varName;

Answer 3

You can use an array to store your data, and just loop over it.

$tempTotal = 0;

$balances[] = 5;
$balances[] = 5;
$balances[] = 5;

for  ($i = 0; $i <= count($balances); $i++) {
    $tempTotal = $tempTotal + $balances[$i];
}

Or for brevity, use a foreach loop:

foreach($balances as $balance) {
    $tempTotal += $balance;
}