Help me please

[freak]

<?php 
//
//this is to generate a random picture from a selected directory.
//the image files must follow the pattern: 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg.
//

//
//Things to check and change.
//
$folder = "../pic/"; //path to the folder. (html style) (leave trailing slash)
$number = 20; //number of pictures in the folder

//
//The actual program itself.
//

//getting a random number from 1 to whatever user specified.
$random_number = rand(1, 20);

//changing the number into a string for use with the image path.
$random_number = settype($random_number, "string");

//generating the image path.
$image=$folder.$random_number.".jpg";

//displaying the image.
echo "<img src=\"$image\">";

//Volia :)

?>

The code is commented and pretty self explanatory, the only problem is that I am getting only one image (1.jpg) shown all the time.

Could someone tell me where I went wrong? Thanks

[trogdor1024]

Take out the

//changing the number into a string for use with the image path.
$random_number = settype($random_number, "string"); 

and you should be fine.

[freak]

Let me try...

[freak]

Thanks, it works.

But why?

[trogdor1024]

To be honest with you, I'm not sure why; I just tested it out on my server and it seemed to do the trick.

[HardCoded]

It's because settype returns a boolean true on success, not the value of its argument. So you had assigned TRUE to $random_number, and since you'd also set $random_number's type to string it became "1".

So you should have just done this:

//changing the number into a string for use with the image path.
settype($random_number, "string"); 

But of course as you've discovered you didn't need to do that.

[freak]

Thanks guys