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Chapter 6: Review Question


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Still diligently working my way through this book and I have come to a roadblock at the end of chapter 6.

 

The question I am having trouble with states:

 

Without knowing anything about $var will the following conditional be TRUE or FALSE? Why?

if ($var = 'donut') {

 

I am apt to say that it will be false because we don't know if $var has been assigned the value donut yet within the program but I am not sure.

 

If someone could answer this for me and give me an explanation so I can fully grasp this concept I would be thankful.

 

Thank you,

 

Alex

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Thanks for the question. The answer is that conditional will be TRUE, because the conditional uses the assignment operator, not the comparison operator. So in the conditional, $var is being assigned a new value. I posed this question as it's a common mistake and bug.

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Ok thank you.

 

I guess I was getting caught up on the fact that you can assign a value to a variable within the if statement.

 

Also after speaking to a few other people I learned that the variable assignment occurs before the expression is evaluated. Now that I know that I would say that because the variable $var is first assigned the value donut and then is evaluated it is TRUE. This is because it is not an empty string, and empty value or a value of 0.

 

Am I correct in my thinking? I just want to make sure I fully understand everything before I get in to deep to not know what I am doing.

 

Thank you for your help and your book. It has been a great introduction so far.

 

Alex

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When comparing a variable to info, you should always use double equals. ( == )

 

// I'm a string
$something = "Compare me";

if ($something == "Compare me") {
  echo "Yes, we're alike";
} else {
  echo "I'm different";
}

// I'm Integer
$oceans = 11;

if ($oceans == 11) {
  echo "Occeans Eleven rocked!";
} elseif ($oceans == 12) {
  echo "I was not as good";
} else {
  echo "Crap...";
}

// BOOLEAN
$sure == TRUE;

// if ($sure) is really enough. Just for the example
if ($sure == TRUE) {
  echo "Of course I'm sure!";
} else {
  echo "Ok. I might've been wrong";
}

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Ok thank you.

 

I guess I was getting caught up on the fact that you can assign a value to a variable within the if statement.

 

Also after speaking to a few other people I learned that the variable assignment occurs before the expression is evaluated. Now that I know that I would say that because the variable $var is first assigned the value donut and then is evaluated it is TRUE. This is because it is not an empty string, and empty value or a value of 0.

 

Am I correct in my thinking? I just want to make sure I fully understand everything before I get in to deep to not know what I am doing.

 

Thank you for your help and your book. It has been a great introduction so far.

 

Alex

 

Thanks for the nice words on the book. Much appreciated. Yes, the variable assignment will occur first and you're correct in thinking that if $var is assigned an empty string or 0, the conditional will be FALSE. More importantly, it will still be a bug, which is the point I'm trying to make by that particular prompt.

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