Using a loop variable as part of another variable name?

I'm sure there must be a simple way to do this, but it's eluding me!

I have a number of variables coming from a form e.g.

$place_text
$place_combo
$town_text
$town_combo
$type_text
$town_combo
etc....

I have a loop that loops through the array:

$formarray = array("place", "town", "type");

foreach ($formarray as $thiselement) {

// Here I'd like to be able to use the value of $thiselement
// to get at the value of each of the form variables
// $place_text, $place_combo, $town_text, $town_combo etc.
// If this were Perl, I'd do ${thiselement}_text and
// ${thiselement}_combo but it doesn't work in PHP.
}

Interestingly, if the aforementioned Perl solution is in quotes as an
echo i.e. echo "${thiselement}_text"; it works, but not in the syntax
I'm using it in:

if ( (${"thisfield"}_combo == -1) && (empty(${"thisfield"}_text)) ) {

Can anyone suggest a solution to this please?

"MrBoom" <andy_isherwood@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:9b6a13b2.0308010213.30b0fe49@posting.google.c om...
> Interestingly, if the aforementioned Perl solution is in quotes as an
> echo i.e. echo "${thiselement}_text"; it works, but not in the syntax
> I'm using it in:
>
> if ( (${"thisfield"}_combo == -1) && (empty(${"thisfield"}_text)) ) {
>
> Can anyone suggest a solution to this please?

if ( (${$thisfield."_combo"} == -1) && (empty(${$thisfield."_text"})) ) {


JW