php substr and the_title()

Hullo
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I want to take the_title and insert two characters at the second last position in the string.
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example: tom/2004-06-18/50 –> tom/2004-06/t/50
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It’s for use with a photo album, where the /t simply refers to a directory with a thumbnail for the image. The code I wrote isn’t working. I don’t know jack about php, I’m still in java mode.
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<?php echo $image = substr(the_title(), 0, -2), ‘t/’, substr(php_title(), -2, 2) ?>
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For example, if the_title was TOM, this code would return TOMt/TOM, when I want Tt/OM. Then I figured that maybe I should put the value returned by the_title() into a variable. Again, I don’t know what I’m doing.
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<?php $addy = the_title(); echo $image = substr($addy, 0, -2), ‘t/’, substr($addy, -2, 2) ?>
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Throw me a friggin bone here.
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Thanks.