Invalid string offset usage

Reports invalid string offset usages that will result in a runtime error.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

PhpInvalidStringOffsetUsageInspection

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | PHP | Probable bugs

The following usages are reported:

Using string offsets as objects or arrays
Unsetting string offsets via unset
Passing string offsets by reference
Creating references to or from string offsets
Incrementing or decrementing string offsets
Using combined operator assignments such as += or .= on string offsets
Assigning string offsets with empty strings or strings with length >1

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection PhpInvalidStringOffsetUsageInspection

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, PhpStorm 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2, Qodana for PHP 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025