Question

I would like to determine whether or not a variable has any text at all.
For instance, my current code is this:

if (is_numeric ($id)) 
{
  //do stuff
} 
else 
{
  // do other stuff 
}

However, there is a problem if my variable contains both a string and a number
such as “you are 93 years old”,
because it sees that number 93 is present and considers the variable numeric.
I want the if statement to only “do stuff” if there is absolutely no text in the variable at all.

Thanks

Answer 1

Try casting the value to int (or float) then compare it back to the unaltered version. They should match values (but not type)

if((int)$id == $id) {
} else {
}

another option would be to use preg_match("/^([\d.\-]+)$/", $id). This would allow you to be very specific about what characters you let $id contain. However using regexp should be considered as the final choice (for performance reasons)