Operators

Table of Contents

• Operator Precedence
• Arithmetic
• Increment and Decrement
• Assignment
• Bitwise
• Comparison
• Error Control
• Execution
• Logic
• String
• Array
• Type
• Functional

An operator is something that takes one or more values (or expressions, in programming jargon) and yields another value (so that the construction itself becomes an expression).

Operators can be grouped according to the number of values they take. Unary operators take only one value, for example ! (the logical not operator) or ++ (the increment operator). Binary operators take two values, such as the familiar arithmetical operators + (plus) and - (minus), and the majority of PHP operators fall into this category. Finally, there is a single ternary operator, ? :, which takes three values; this is usually referred to simply as "the ternary operator" (although it could perhaps more properly be called the conditional operator).

A full list of PHP operators follows in the section Operator Precedence. The section also explains operator precedence and associativity, which govern exactly how expressions containing several different operators are evaluated.

of course this should be clear, but i think it has to be mentioned espacially:

AND is not the same like &&

for example:

<?php $a && $b || $c; ?>
is not the same like
<?php $a AND $b || $c; ?>

the first thing is
(a and b) or c

the second
a and (b or c)

'cause || has got a higher priority than and, but less than &&

of course, using always [ && and || ] or [ AND and OR ] would be okay, but than you should at least respect the following:

<?php $a = $b && $c; ?>
<?php $a = $b AND $c; ?>

the first code will set $a to the result of the comparison $b with $c, both have to be true, while the second code line will set $a like $b and THAN - after that - compare the success of this with the value of $c

maybe usefull for some tricky coding and helpfull to prevent bugs :D

greetz, Warhog