return (int) $value VS return $value

[thilakan]

return  (int) $value   VS return $value

 

What is the purpose of using int in a bracket?    return  (int) $value  

 

Which is the best and safest method?

Thank you

[ginerjm]

The use of (int) means to produce an integer result variable rather than a 'default' variable based upon the incoming contents.  Given an input of 'X123' your returned variable/value would be a 'string' type but if you use (int) you would get 0 since it didn't start with any numbers.  OTOH if the input is "123x" then you would get a value of 123 if you used (int).

 

Check out this in the manual:  http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.conversion

[inactive]

It's called casting, i.e. as above, converting from one type to another.

In most cases not necessary with PHP, as it implicitly converts when necessary.