Question

I was reading PHP manual and I came across type juggling

I was confused, because I’ve never came across such thing.

$foo = 5 + "10 Little Piggies"; // $foo is integer (15)

When I used this code it returns me 15, it adds up 10 + 5 and when I use is_int() it returns me true ie. 1 where I was expecting an error, it later referenced me to String conversion to numbers where I read If the string starts with valid numeric data, this will be the value used. Otherwise, the value will be 0 (zero)

$foo = 1 + "bob3";             /* $foo is int though this doesn't add up 3+1 
                                  but as stated this adds 1+0 */

now what should I do if I want to treat 10 Little Piggies OR bob3 as a string and not as an int. Using settype() doesn’t work either. I want an error that I cannot add 5 to a string.

Answer 1

If you want an error, you need to trigger an error:

$string = "bob3";
if (is_string($string)) 
{
    trigger_error('Does not work on a string.');
}
$foo = 1 + $string;

Or if you like to have some interface:

class IntegerAddition
{
    private $a, $b;
    public function __construct($a, $b) {
        if (!is_int($a)) throw new InvalidArgumentException('$a needs to be integer');
        if (!is_int($b)) throw new InvalidArgumentException('$b needs to be integer');
        $this->a = $a; $this->b = $b;
    }
    public function calculate() {
        return $this->a + $this->b;
    }
}

$add = new IntegerAddition(1, 'bob3');
echo $add->calculate();