I've never come across this before, but how would you test whether three variables are the same? The following, obviously doesn't work but I can't think of an elegant (and correct) way to write the following:
if ($select_above_average === $select_average === $select_below_average) { }
===, not ==. PHP's loose equality is not transitive!
(a === b && b === c && c === d && d === e) etc.. to check if multiple variables are all equal.
== is not transitive in PHP, if you use values $a='0'; $b=0; $c='0_php_fail';, ($a == $b) && ($b == $c) evaluates to true, while $a == $c evaluates to false
include uses everything after it as one single parameter while (include ...) ... would behave differently. sorry if this may be a bad example for you, but it's true for many php-language-"constructs". not only for include.$values = array($select_above_average, $select_average, $select_below_average);
if(count(array_unique($values)) === 1) {
// do stuff if all elements are the same
}
Would be another way to do it.
if ($select_above_average === $select_average
&& $select_average === $select_below_average) { }
you already have your answer by Adam but a good way to remember how to do this correctly is to remember for a single validation you should be wrapping in () braces, if your only doing one single check then you already have the braces provided by the if ( ) statement.
Example:
if ( a === b )
and if your doing multiple then
if( ( a === b ) && ( c === d ) )
Sop if you remember that every set of braces is a validation check, you can have login like this:
if( (( a === b ) || ( c === d )) && ( e === f ) )
if statements and many other logical operations work on hierarchy so that the amount of individual checks within a check has an effect on he parent check.
taking the third example above if a === b or c === d fails then e === f will never be checked as the ab,cd is wrapped in braces so that is returned and checked.
Hope this helps you a little more.
I had a unique situation in which I needed to see if the amount of items in three arrays was the same much like this scenario.
This is what I came up with:
(Assume that fields, operators and values are all arrays)
$allfieldscount = array(count($fields), count($operators), count($values)); //store an array of the count of all the arrays.
$same = array_count_values($allfieldscount);//returns an array by values in the array. We are looking to see only 1 item in the array with a value of 3.
if(count($same) != 1){
//Then it's not the same
}else{
//Then it's the same
}
This tactic counts the fields in the different arrays and by using array_count_values if they are all the same then the count of the array it returns will be '1', if it's anything else then it's not the same. Look up array_count_values on php.net to understand more what its doing.
