Question

Can I use the OR argument in this way in PHP? Meaning if $x is null assign $y to $var.

$var = $x || $y

Simple question, cheers!

Answer 1

No. PHP’s boolean operators evaluate to true or false, not the value of the operands as in Javascript. So you’ll have to write something like this:

$var = $x ? $x : $y;

Since 5.3, you can write this though, which basically has the same effect as Javascript’s ||:

$var = $x ?: $y;

That requires that $x exists though, otherwise you should check with isset first.