Weird error. Illegal offset 'name'

Well, this has been frustrating me for a few days now, so i finally decided to come here for some help. Ive never had this problem before, but for some reason i get this error when i try to save a player name into an array:

Code:

InvalidKeyException: "Illegal string offset 'HotshotHD'" (E_WARNING) in "/RealmCore/src/realmcore/game/Freezetag" at line 201

Here is the code:

PHP:

if(!isset($gameFrozenFT[$player->getName()])) {
  $this->freeze($player, $gameId);
  $hitter->sendMessage($this->getPlugin()->formatMessage("§aYou froze §7" . $player->getName(), "game"));
  $player->sendMessage($this->getPlugin()->formatMessage("§aYou have been §cfrozen", "game"));
  $this->getPlugin()->getStats()->setPoints($hitter, $this->getPlugin()->getStats()->getPoints($hitter) + 2);


freeze() function:

PHP:

public function freeze(Player $player, $gameId) {
   $gameFrozenStr = "gameFrozenFT" . $gameId;
   
   $this->getPlugin()->$gameFrozenStr[$player->getName()] = $player; // Line 201 that the error points out
    } 

It's probably some silly mistake i made, but it cant seem to find out what i did wrong. Any help is appreciated.

Your silly mistake is calling $this->freeze($player->getName(), $gameId); where $player->getName() is supposed to be a player object and not a string.
As you can see you are trying to extract something from a string in line 201.

That was just a typo here. The error still happens.

You first have to set the entry in the array to null, then overwrite it.

Why are you putting the player's name and then call the name again? It's like if you do $player->getName()->getName();

Just put:

PHP:

public function freeze($str, $gameId) {
   $gameFrozenStr = "gameFrozenFT" . $gameId;
  
   $this->getPlugin()->$gameFrozenStr[$str] = $player;
    }

$this->freeze($player->getName(), $id);//call function

What do you mean? Why can't you directly overwrite?

Illegal string offset, does that actually mean that you are trying to use a string as an array? try var_dump

As far as I know, you have to set it to null before being able to set it to something else.

Setting what to null?

Argh, I'm bad at explaining. The Index in the array. Example:

PHP:

$this->array["whatever"] = null; // If it isn't set yet - Could also check with isset()
$this->array["whatever"] = "hey";

Doesnt work. The error still occurs.

Can you check to make sure that $this->getPlugin()->$gameFrozenStr; is an array and not a string?

Use var_dump... It is your friend.

Why would you need to set it to null? You're still assigning a value to it even if that value is a void.

PHP:

// change
$this->getPlugin()->$gameFrozenStr[$player->getName()] = $player;
// to
$this->getPlugin()->gameFrozenStr[$player->getName()] = $player;


It appears that he really means $plugin->$gameFrozenStr not $plugin->gameFrozenStr.

No, you don't need to. This is totally redundant.

Then he clearly doesn't understand how arrays and variables work.

No. It seems that he is really using $gameFrozenStr as a class property name. In PHP, this is valid code.

$gameFrozenStr is a string, unless $this->getPlugin()->$stringVariable defines a new variable for the class, I fail to see how it would work.