I am parsing the Date: header of an email address, which includes a GMT offset in the form [+|-]%4d.  Ideally, one of the following would work. ;)

$hour_mins = '0600';
$gmt_offset = '+0200';

$hour_mins = $hour_mins $gmt_offset[0] substr ($gmt_offset, 1);
That returns a parse error.. as does the short form of that (+=).

As it is now, I'm switch()'ing the $gmt_offset[0].
$hour_mins += substr ($gmt_offset, 1); works..
$hour_mins = $hour_mins + substr ($gmt_offset, 1); works..

Is this unsupported for any particular reason.. or am I just not syntactically correct?

Thanks!
Jeremy