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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T04:37:10+00:00

$var = ‘test_1’; var_dump(++$var); // string(6) test_2 $var2 = ‘1_test’; var_dump(++$var2); // string(6) 1_tesu

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$var = 'test_1';
var_dump(++$var); // string(6) "test_2" 

$var2 = '1_test';
var_dump(++$var2); // string(6) "1_tesu"

$var3 = 'test_z';
var_dump(++$var3); // string(6) "test_a"

$var4 = 'test_';
var_dump(++$var4); // string(5) "test_"

So apparently, using an increment operator on a string has the effect of increasing the digit if the last character is a number, increasing the letter and then resetting to a once z if the last character is in the alphabet, and has no effect on non alpha numeric characters.

Is this a standard feature, expected in many scripting languages, or did I just find a PHP easter egg?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    PHP follows Perl’s convention when dealing with arithmetic operations
    on character variables and not C’s. For example, in PHP and Perl $a =
    ‘Z’; $a++; turns $a into ‘AA’, while in C a = ‘Z’; a++; turns a into
    ‘[‘ (ASCII value of ‘Z’ is 90, ASCII value of ‘[‘ is 91). Note that
    character variables can be incremented but not decremented and even so
    only plain ASCII characters (a-z and A-Z) are supported.
    Incrementing/decrementing other character variables has no effect, the
    original string is unchanged.

    -> http://php.net/manual/en/language.operators.increment.php

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