Question

Given this declaration:

(string)$my_string = 'Hello world';

*vs*

$my_string = 'Hello world';

or*

 (int)$my_int = 1;


 $my_int = 1;

Is there an advantage over the first way of defining a string variable in PHP?

Answer 1

Your “typecasting” code doesn’t actually accomplish anything.

(type) $var = literal does this:

1. Assign literal value to $var with the literal value’s native type.
2. “Return” (as an expression) the value of $var cast to the desired type.

The type of $var remains unchanged.

For example:

var_dump((string) $s = 1);
var_dump($s);

Output is:

string(1) "1"
int(1)

So there is no point to this syntax. Typecasting with a literal is almost certainly pointless.

However it can be useful to force a variable to be a certain type, for example: $intvar = (int) $var;