php’s slippery types

summary

Takeaway points:

Call error_reporting(E_ALL);, in every file.
Use === (and, !==) to compare, in php.
The functions is_numeric, is_string, etc. are ones you actually want to use regularly (rather than type-casts, explicit or implicit).

There are some things that are not an error, but should be. For example: var_dump( $iNeverDefinedThisVariable + 47 ); or var_dump( $notAnArray[9+$notAnIndex] + 47 ); or var_dump( strlen(heyThisHasNoQuotesSoIsNotReallyAString) );.

This means that if you ever mis-type a variable name, you won't get an error, but instead PHP will happily proceed as if nothing is wrong ¹.
PHP does not have your back.

Solution: Fortunately, people figured out that PHP's default behavior is unforgiveable, and added a switch to turn the above three behaviours into errors, as they should be: error_reporting(E_ALL);. Put this line at the top of all your PHP files, and save hours of headaches later.

Types in php

video: type conversion in php (15m38s)

PHP is dynamically typed: that is, it figures out the type of values at run time — whether an expression evaluates to a boolean, int, float, string, arrays, or object. (Contrast that with Java, which is statically typed: it knows the type of each value at compile-time, since the programmer is required to state the type each variable will hold, and the type returned by a function, and the type that must be passed in to each function.) So a PHP variable can hold an int at one moment in time, and later hold a string; a function might return a string sometimes and return a boolean other times, etc.. Javascript, python, and racket are other dynamically-typed languages.

aside: Some people say that PHP is “untyped”; that is wrong. It is always aware of the type of any value. PHP has the types you might expect, including boolean, int, float, string, arrays, objects.² Sometimes people (erroneously) say PHP is “weakly typed”. They might be trying to say “dynamically typed”, or they might be trying to say “PHP is particularly fast-and-loose about type conversions.”. It is true that PHP does significantly more “type juggling” than most sane languages.

Conversion between strings and integers:

var_dump( "hello" + "world" );
var_dump( 12 + 3 );
var_dump( "12" + "3" );
var_dump( "12" + 3 );
var_dump( "12hello" + "3world7" + "nevermind92" );

var_dump( strlen(37) );

Remember: PHP does not have your back.

Rationale:

The solution: If you have a string, use is_numeric along with type casting.

Booleans: Many values, if used in a boolean context, are "false-ish":

var_dump( false == false );
var_dump( false == 0 );
var_dump( false == 0.0 );
var_dump( false == "0" );
var_dump( false == array() );
var_dump( $someUndefinedVar == false );   // ?!

Be careful:

var_dump( false == 0 );           // true, as just noted.
// == is not transitive (!):
var_dump( 0 == "00" );            // true.
var_dump( false == "00" );        // false?!

var_dump( 0 == "-0" );            // true.
var_dump( false == "-0" );        // false?!

var_dump( 0 == 0.0 );             // true.
var_dump( false == "0.0" );       // false?!

Caution: There are also the boolean operators with spelled-out names, AND and OR. Do not use them! They are just like &&, || except that they have unexpectedly low precedence (less than the assignment operators ³ Use parentheses to force precedence if you are doing something unusual (or even, just use parentheses routinely, so that you never even need to think twice about precedence!).

Upshot: PHP has ===, which does comparison suppressing any type-casts. Using this avoids unexpected results; when you want to convert you can call conversion-functions explicitly.

So, for this class (and in all php), use === (and, !==) to compare, in php.
Sure, you'll see examples on the web and in books that use ==, but that's just asking for trouble.
(If using objects, though: php's === tests for identical objects (like Java's ==), and php's == does a one-level-deep-equals (closer to Java's .equals?).)

¹ In human law, if you know something is wrong and don't report it, it's often criminal negligence. Why we don't hold PHP or certain other languages to the same standard, I don't know. ↩

² Though PHP does not have the type "char"; it just has strings-of-length-one. It makes one wonder: When creating a string, what does php think it's stringing together? ↩

³ So $x = false || true; is fine; it means So $x = (false || true);, and $x gets the value true. But $x = false OR true; means ($x = false) OR true;, which means $x gets false but the entire line returns true if used in some bigger context. (Btw, using the result of assignment in a bigger context is rarely a good idea; it's a holdover from more primitive I/O libraries that didn't have any peek/hasNext functionality.)
Bottom line: use && and ||, and use parentheses if you need some unusual precedence. ↩

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