mikebernat.com Web-Development, Design, Usability

I just ran into an interesting question while studying for the Zend certification exam, and I thought I would share because I was very confused.

Q: What is the output of the following:

<?php
$a = 010;
$b = 0xA;
$c = 2;

print $a + $b + $c;
?>

Scroll down for the answer and explanation.

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This questions deals with the many data-types that PHP accepts for variable assignments. I knew that the assignment for $c was hexadecimal and that a 'A' represented decimal 10. $c is obvious because it is in plain old decimal format as well. However, $a threw me for a loop. I thought that it would be interpreted as decimal 10, and that the leading 0 would just be tossed as being extraneous. Boy was I mistaken.

I got the answer wrong. I thought since $a = 10, $b = 10, and $c = 2, the answer was 22. However the answer provided by the test was 20. I was about to write an email to the mock-test group when I decided to take the 5 seconds and do some investigating.

I var_dumped each assignment and was startled to discover that $a = 8, not the 10 I originally thought.

<?php
var_dump($a = 010); // 8
var_dump($b = 0xA); // 10
var_dump($c = 2);   // 2

print $a + $b + $c; // 20
?>

Why was this? After some digging I found that in addition to the decimal and hexadecimal formats accepted by PHP, Octal was also accepted. I knew very little about octal values. The quick description is:

Octal notation - identified by its leading zero and used mainly to express UNIX-style access permissions.

Some examples:

<?php
var_dump(0001); // 1
var_dump(0005); // 5
var_dump(0010); // 8
var_dump(0011); // 9
var_dump(0017); // 15
var_dump(0030); // 24
var_dump(0100); // 64
var_dump(0110); // 72
?>

I hope, like me, you learned something new today.