Question

This if else statement does not work: (in this situation it displays ‘x is euqal to null’)

<?php

$x = 0;

if ($x == 'null'){
    echo 'x is euqal to null';}

else if ($x == 0){
    echo 'x is equal to zero!';}

else if ($x == 1){
    echo 'x is equal to one!';}

?>

My reason for needing this is that I am writing a quiz program, and one of the features is that it displays a tick, cross or three dots next to each question depending on whether the user has done it and what their score is.

If the score for that question = ‘null’ then they haven’t yet done it ( display …)
If the score for that question = 1 then they have done it, and got it right (display tick)
If the score for that question = 0 then they’ve none it, but got it wrong (display cross)

My actual code is:

$score = ($_SESSION['score']);       
         if ($score[$questionList[$loop]['ID']]=='null'){ ?>
             <p style="display:inline;"> ...  </p> <?php } 
         else if ($score[$questionList[$loop]['ID']]==1){ ?>
             <p style="display:inline;"> &#10003  </p> <?php }      
        else if ($score[$questionList[$loop]['ID']]==0){ ?>
             <p style="display:inline;"> X  </p> <?php }  ?>  

Although it’s part of a much bigger page.

I am quite new to PHP, so am probably being incredibly thick here, but any suggestions will be much appreciated, thanks : )

Answer 1

I believe the first condition returns true because strings are equal to 0. See documentation on comparison operators.

The solution is to replace your == with ===. Ex:

<?php

$x = 0;

if ($x === 'null'){
    echo 'x is euqal to null';}

else if ($x === 0){ \\true
    echo 'x is equal to zero!';}

else if ($x === 1){
    echo 'x is equal to one!';}

?>