Question

It happens that, when writing some PHP code, I accidentally put a semicolon ; right after an if statement. For example:

if($a > 1);
{
   ....
}

I thought that PHP should raise an error in this case, but it is not. That kind of syntax should have a meaning, I’m just wondering what it is.

For what I could see the condition seems to be always true when the ; is added but I’m not sure at all this is the meaning.

Answer 1

A single ; can be read as an “empty statement” and

if($a > 1);
{
   ....
}

is equivalent to

if($a > 1)
    ;        // execute an empty statement if $a > 1

// then execute the following block of code.
{
   ....
}

For what I could see the condition seems to be always true when the ; is added

It only seems like it since the block is executed regardless of the if-statement.