I'm wondering if the $count++ way of incrementing a counter is okay to use in a conditional statement? Will the variable maintain it's new value?
$count = 0;
foreach ($things as $thing){
if($count++ == 1) continue;
...
}
2 Answers
- $count++ is a post-increment. That means that it will increment after the evaluation.
- ++$count is a pre-increment. That means that it will increment before the evaluation.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.increment.php
To answer your question, that is perfectly valid, just keep in check that your value will be 2 after the if has been done.
4 Comments
War10ck
Just out of curiosity, shouldn't
$count be 1 after the evaluation. It's 0 to begin with. Incrementing would give you 1 would it not? I may be missing something though.
GeminiDomino
@War10ck: No, the if will be true if $count is 1, but since it's a post-increment, AFTER the if is determined to be true, THEN $count will be incremented, so it will be 2. The first iteration through the loop will evaluate the conditional to be false.
War10ck
@GeminiDomino Ahhh, yes. Sorry that was a really dumb question. I see it now. Thanks buddy. Appreciate the explanation. :)
GeminiDomino
De nada. Pre/post-incrementation, I've learned, can be deceptively nuanced. :)
Yes, it will, but you want to pay attention to the difference between $count++(post-incrementation) and ++$count(pre-incrementation), or you might not get the results you expect.
For instance, the code snippet you wrote will "continue" on the second "$thing", but go through the loop on the first, because the value of $count won't be incremented until after its value is tested. If that's what you're going for, then right on, but it's one of those common "gotchas", so I thought I should mention it.
$count++will increment$countand return its original value.