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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-19T01:09:08+00:00

I’ve long used assignment inside long if statements to simplify things. But in this

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I’ve long used assignment inside long if statements to simplify things. But in this case, it’s not working as intended. Here’s what I’ve got:

$Employee = GetEmployeeName($Record['employee_id']);
echo 'First name: '.$Employee['first_name'];
echo 'Last name: '.$Employee['last_name'];
echo 'Record first name: '.$Record['first_name'];
echo 'Record last name: '.$Record['last_name'];

echo 'Comparing first name: ';
var_dump(strcasecmp($Employee['first_name'], $Record['first_name']));

echo 'Comparing last name: ';
var_dump(strcasecmp($Employee['last_name'], $Record['last_name']));

echo 'Comparing both together: ';
var_dump(strcasecmp($Employee['first_name'], $Record['first_name']) 
         || strcasecmp($Employee['last_name'], $Record['last_name']));

echo 'All together now: ';
var_dump($Foo = GetEmployeeName($Record['employee_id']) 
         && (strcasecmp($Foo['first_name'], $Record['first_name']) 
             || strcasecmp($Foo['last_name'], $Record['last_name'])));

Here’s the results:

First name: ZACHARY
Last name: TAYLOR
Record first name: Zachary
Record last name: Taylor
Comparing first name: int(0)
Comparing last name: int(0)
Comparing both together: bool(false)
All together now: bool(true)

This makes no sense. Comparing the first name resolves as 0 (false); comparing the last name resolves as 0 (false); comparing them together resolves as false. Yet when I add the assignment into the if, it suddenly resolves as true. I’ve been assigning variables in ifs for a long time and I’ve never seen this happen. The weird thing is, if I assign outside the if, it works fine. So I could do that, but at this point it’s about the principle of finding out what’s going wrong so I can improve my knowledge of the language.

Assignment in this case gives true, as you can see by the fact that $Employee is populated. So, the final var_dump is essentially “true && false”, which should resolve as false. Right?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The boolean operator && has a higher precedence than the assignment operator =. So this:

    $Foo = GetEmployeeName($Record['employee_id']) 
     && (strcasecmp($Foo['first_name'], $Record['first_name']) 
         || strcasecmp($Foo['last_name'], $Record['last_name']))

    Is equivalent to:

    $Foo = (GetEmployeeName($Record['employee_id']) 
     && (strcasecmp($Foo['first_name'], $Record['first_name']) 
         || strcasecmp($Foo['last_name'], $Record['last_name'])))

    Put the parentheses around the assignment and it works:

    ($Foo = GetEmployeeName($Record['employee_id'])) 
     && (strcasecmp($Foo['first_name'], $Record['first_name']) 
         || strcasecmp($Foo['last_name'], $Record['last_name']))
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