Learning PHP: How can I make sure an integer 0 does not yield true in if comparison statement?

Casting a string that's non-numeric to int yields a 0, but you can use ===. <?php if ( $a === $b ) { echo "true"; } ?> Another case where you might want to use something other than implicit comparison: strpos returns an integer position of where a string is located in another, or false if there is no occurrence. Therefore, if you're using strpos to check if a string is located in another but discarding the actual location, it may be helpful to use !== false, otherwise nothing in the if block will execute because 0 is implicitly equal to false. <?php $text = "quora"; if ( strpos( $text, "qu" ) ) { // nothing happens here } if ( strpos( $text, "qu" ) !== false ) { // this does get executed! }

Lojjiik and Anonymous have the right answer. It's the type comparison operand you want: ===. It's a good question though. One of the faults of PHP is how it allows you to write code without first having to understand basic concepts like variable types and evaluations. Many programmers end up writing code that is full of assumptions simply because of loose typing. I am a proponent of loose typing as I think programming languages should not create more obstacles than necessary. But comparisons is such a basic tenet that I wish it was better taught.