array_rand anomaly: "/" removed from values.

[perplexity]

I took me some considerable time to work out what was going wrong.

I had been trying to use the array_rand function to gather a random selection of images to display, each of which to be referenced with a number string prefixed with a "/" slash, for example "/106".

The trouble then turned out to be that the array_rand function, for whatever reason best known to itself, returns the requisite assorttment of selected values, but with the slashes all stripped from the returned result, with the "/106" for instance returned as a mere "106".

This was easy enought to fix, as soon as the unexpected result was detected as the reason for the failure to achieve the expected result. It works fine with the array_keys function used to extract an array of keys to use as a proxy, in order then to extract from the keys array to reference in turn the original array.

I am raising the subject here to warn of the unfortunate possibility, and to wonder if anybody has any insight to offer as to why the slashes would be stripped off to begin with, and if therfore this might happen with other cases. I had rather hoped that including the slashes would tend to make sure that the array values would not be treated as scalar values, but perhaps the effect is rarther the opposite, that they persuade the array_rand function to treat them in this particular fashion.

I had thought that perhaps the function was trying to divide by the value, except that 0 divided by 106 should be 0, not 106.

-- RH.