ColdFusion Developer's Guide

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Creating variables with periods
You should avoid creating the names of variables (except for dot notation in structures) that
include periods. However, ColdFusion provides mechanisms for handling cases where you
must do so, for example, to maintain compatibility with names of variables in external data
sources or to integrate your application with existing code that uses periods in variable names.
The following sections describe how to create simple variable names that include periods.
Using brackets to create variables with periods
You can create a variable name that includes periods by using associative array structure
notation, as described in Chapter 5, “Structure notation.” To do so, you must do the
following:
■ Refer to the variable as part of a structure. You can always do this, because ColdFusion
considers all scopes to be structures. For more information on scopes, see “About scopes”
on page 72.
■ Put the variable name that must include a period inside square brackets and single- or
double-quotation marks.
The following example shows this technique:
My.Variable.With.Periods is: #My.Variable.With.Periods#
Request.Another.Variable.With.Periods is:
#Request.Another.Variable.With.Periods#
Creating Client and Cookie variables with periods
To create a Client or Cookie variable with a name that includes one or more periods, simply
assign the variable a value. For example, the following line creates a Cookie named
User.Preferences.CreditCard:
64 Using ColdFusion Variables