Question

Is this behaviour correct in PHP?

<?php echo '-' . 1 + 1 . ' crazy cats'; ?>
// Outputs:
0 crazy cats

I understand that minus is being concatenated to the first ‘1’ and ‘-1’ casted to integer, and not ‘2’ to string.

Please explain why.

What is the best way to solve it?
This one?

<?php echo '-' . (string)1 + 1 . ' crazy cats'; ?>

Answer 1

If you prefer, this avoids precedence:

printf('-%d crazy cats',1+1);