Question

Ok so I just realized some wierd behavior with PHP and would like to know why this happens. So running this code:

 var_dump( true and false ? 'one' : 'two' );

Outputs

boolean true

instead of ‘two’ as you would expect… The problem appears to be using ‘and’.

Running:

var_dump( true && false ? 'one' : 'two' );

outputs

string 'two' (length=3)

just as expected. Why does using ‘and’ instead of ‘&&’ cause this weird behavior? Are they not supposed to be the same?

Answer 1

That’s because ?: has higher precedence than and, but lower than &&.