Those notices are because you don't have the used variable defined and my_index key was not present into $my_array variable.

Those notices were triggered every time, because your code is not correct, but probably you didn't have the reporting of notices on.

Solve the bugs:

$my_variable_name = "Variable name"; // defining variable echo "My variable value is: " . $my_variable_name; if(isset($my_array["my_index"])){ echo "My index value is: " . $my_array["my_index"]; // check if my_index is set } 

Another way to get this out:

ini_set("error_reporting", false)