PHP - Operators

There are many operators used in PHP, so we have separated them into
the following categories to make it easier to learn them all.

• Assignment Operators
• Arithmetic Operators
• Comparison Operators
• String Operators
• Combination Arithmetic & Assignment Operators

Assignment Operators

Assignment operators are used to set a variable equal to a value or set
a variable to another variable's value. Such an assignment of value is done with
the "=", or equal character. Example:

• $my_var = 4;
• $another_var = $my_var;

Now both $my_var and $another_var contain the value 4. Assignments can also be used in conjunction with arithmetic operators.

Arithmetic Operators

Operator	English	Example
+	Addition	2 + 4
-	Subtraction	6 - 2
*	Multiplication	5 * 3
/	Division	15 / 3
%	Modulus	43 % 10

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Comparison Operators

Comparisons are used to check the relationship between variables and/or
values. If you would like to see a simple example of a comparison operator in action, check out our
If Statement Lesson. Comparison
operators are used inside conditional statements and evaluate to either true
or false. Here are the most important comparison operators of PHP.



Assume: $x = 4 and $y = 5;

Operator	English	Example	Result
==	Equal To	$x == $y	false
!=	Not Equal To	$x != $y	true
<	Less Than	$x < $y	true
>	Greater Than	$x > $y	false
<=	Less Than or Equal To	$x <= $y	true
>=	Greater Than or Equal To	$x >= $y	false

String Operators

As we have already seen in the Echo
Lesson, the period "." is used to add two strings together, or more technically,
the period is the concatenation operator for strings.

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Combination Arithmetic & Assignment Operators

In programming it is a very common task to have to increment a variable by some fixed amount. The
most common example of this is a counter. Say you want to increment a counter by 1, you would
have:

• $counter = $counter + 1;

However, there is a shorthand for doing this.

• $counter += 1;

This combination assignment/arithmetic operator would accomplish the same task. The downside to this
combination operator is that it reduces code readability to those programmers who are not used to such
an operator. Here are some examples of other common
shorthand operators. In general, "+=" and "-=" are the most widely used combination operators.

Operator	English	Example	Equivalent Operation
+=	Plus Equals	$x += 2;	$x = $x + 2;
-=	Minus Equals	$x -= 4;	$x = $x - 4;
*=	Multiply Equals	$x *= 3;	$x = $x * 3;
/=	Divide Equals	$x /= 2;	$x = $x / 2;
%=	Modulo Equals	$x %= 5;	$x = $x % 5;
.=	Concatenate Equals	$my_str.="hello";	$my_str = $my_str . "hello";

Pre/Post-Increment & Pre/Post-Decrement

This may seem a bit absurd, but there is even a shorter shorthand for the common
task of adding 1 or subtracting 1 from a variable. To add one to a variable or "increment"
use the "++" operator:

• $x++; Which is equivalent to $x += 1; or $x = $x + 1;

To subtract 1 from a variable, or "decrement" use the "--" operator:

• $x--; Which is equivalent to $x -= 1; or $x = $x - 1;

In addition to this "shorterhand" technique, you can specify whether you
want to increment before the line of code is being executed or after the
line has executed. Our PHP code below will display the difference.

Display:

As you can see the value of $x++ is not reflected in the echoed text because
the variable is not incremented until after the line of code is executed. However,
with the pre-increment "++$x" the variable does reflect the addition immediately.