Chapter 6. Types

Table of Contents
Integers
Floating point numbers
Strings
Arrays
Objects
Type juggling

PHP supports the following types:

The type of a variable is usually not set by the programmer; rather, it is decided at runtime by PHP depending on the context in which that variable is used.

If you would like to force a variable to be converted to a certain type, you may either cast the variable or use the settype() function on it.

Note that a variable may behave in different manners in certain situations, depending on what type it is at the time. For more information, see the section on Type Juggling.

Integers

Integers can be specified using any of the following syntaxes:

  1 
  2 $a = 1234; # decimal number
  3 $a = -123; # a negative number
  4 $a = 0123; # octal number (equivalent to 83 decimal)
  5 $a = 0x12; # hexadecimal number (equivalent to 18 decimal)
  6

This PHP manual is Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 the PHP Documentation Group. It has been licensed under the GPL. Permission granted for display on the Abscissa Tech web site on March 9, 2000. The most recent PHP documentation is available at http://www.php.net/.