Question

So I have a multi-dim array. I’m defining a few array keys with boolean as values:

$geo_entries['hostip']['geoTypes']['country']=true;
$geo_entries['hostip']['geoTypes']['country_short']=true;
$geo_entries['hostip']['geoTypes']['city']=false;
$geo_entries['hostip']['geoTypes']['city_short']=false;

Now I do a print_r() on that, and this is the result:

( [country] => 1 [country_short] => 1 [city] => [city_short] => )

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t false==0?

I try to do a quick check on the value (for booleans):

if($geo_entries['hostip']['geoTypes']['city']==boolean){
//this returns false...
}

The condition above returns false with ['hostip']['geoTypes']['city'] but true with ['hostip']['geoTypes']['country']. The only difference between the two is that city has the value of false and country has the value of true.

When I define the value as 0 instead of false – all works well…

I have a feeling there is something I have embarrassingly missed, which is resulting to this misunderstanding.

Anyone care to explain? – (Why false!=0?)

Answer 1

You are comparing your variable (that contains (bool) true / (bool) false) to boolean. The Simple literal boolean is not defined, PHP handles it as a string.

if($geo_entries['hostip']['geoTypes']['city']==boolean)

therefore becomes

if($geo_entries['hostip']['geoTypes']['city']=="boolean")

The == operator compares those to after type-juggling. "boolean" is a non-empty string and gets treated as (bool) true. So your comparisions boil down to (bool) true == (bool) true which returns true and (bool) false == (bool) true which returns false ofcourse.