Introduction

PHP supports eight primitive types.

Four scalar types:

boolean
integer
floating-point number (float)
string

Two compound types:

array
object

And finally two special types:

resource
NULL

Замечание: In this manual you'll often find mixed parameters. This pseudo-type indicates multiple possibilities for that parameter.

The type of a variable is usually not set by the programmer; rather, it is decided at runtime by PHP depending on the context in which that variable is used.

Замечание: If you want to check out the type and value of a certain expression, use var_dump().

If you simply want a human-readable representation of the type for debugging, use gettype(). To check for a certain type, do not use gettype(), but use the is_type functions.

If you would like to force a variable to be converted to a certain type, you may either cast the variable or use the settype() function on it.

Note that a variable may behave in different manners in certain situations, depending on what type it is at the time. For more information, see the section on Type Juggling.

Booleans

This is the easiest type. A boolean expresses a truth value. It can be either TRUE or FALSE.

Замечание: The boolean type was introduced in PHP 4.

Syntax

To specify a boolean literal, use either the keyword TRUE or FALSE. Both are case-insensitive.

$foo = True; // assign the value TRUE to $foo

Usually you use some kind of operator which returns a boolean value, and then pass it on to a control structure.

// == is an operator which returns a boolean
if ($action == "show_version") {
    echo "The version is 1.23";
}

// this is not necessary:
if ($show_separators == TRUE) {
    echo "<hr>\n";
}

// because you can simply type this:
if ($show_separators) {
    echo "<hr>\n";
}

Converting to boolean

To explicitly convert a value to boolean, use either the (bool) or the (boolean) cast. However, in most cases you do not need to use the cast, since a value will be automatically converted if an operator, function or control structure requires a boolean argument.

See also Type Juggling.

When converting to boolean, the following values are considered FALSE:

the boolean FALSE

the integer 0 (zero)

the float 0.0 (zero)

the empty string, and the string "0"

an array with zero elements

an object with zero elements

the special type NULL (including unset variables)

Every other value is considered TRUE

Integers

An integer is a number of the set Z = {..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ...}.

See also: Arbitrary length integers and Floating point numbers

Syntax

Integers can be specified in decimal (10-based), hexadecimal (16-based) or octal (8-based) notation, optionally preceded by a sign (- or +).

If you use the octal notation, you must precede the number with a 0 (zero), to use hexadecimal notation precede the number with 0x.

Пример 1. Integer literals

$a = 1234; # decimal number
$a = -123; # a negative number
$a = 0123; # octal number (equivalent to 83 decimal)
$a = 0x1A; # hexadecimal number (equivalent to 26 decimal)

The size of an integer is platform-dependent, although a maximum value of about two billion is the usual value (that's 32 bits signed). PHP does not support unsigned integers.

Integer overflow

If you specify a number beyond the bounds of the integer type, it will be interpreted as a float instead. Also, if you perform an operation that results in a number beyond the bounds of the integer type, a float will be returned instead.

$large_number =  2147483647;
var_dump($large_number);
// output: int(2147483647)

$large_number =  2147483648;
var_dump($large_number);
// output: float(2147483648)

// this goes also for hexadecimal specified integers:
var_dump( 0x80000000 );
// output: float(2147483648)

$million = 1000000;
$large_number =  50000 * $million;
var_dump($large_number);
// output: float(50000000000)

Внимание

Unfortunately, there was a bug in PHP so that this does not always work correctly when there are negative numbers involved. For example: when you do -50000 * $million, the result will be -429496728. However, when both operands are positive there is no problem.

This is solved in PHP 4.1.0.

There is no integer division operator in PHP. 1/2 yields the float 0.5.

var_dump( 25/7 );
// output: float(3.5714285714286)

Converting to integer

To explicitly convert a value to integer, use either the (int) or the (integer) cast. However, in most cases you do not need to use the cast, since a value will be automatically converted if an operator, function or control structure requires a integer argument.

See also type-juggling.

From booleans

FALSE will yield 0 (zero), and TRUE will yield 1 (one).

From floating point numbers

When converting from float to integer, the number will be rounded towards zero.

If the float is beyond the boundaries of integer (usually +/- 2.15e+9 = 2^31), the result is undefined, since the float hasn't got enough precision to give an exact integer result. No warning, not even a notice will be issued in this case!

Внимание

Never cast an unknown fraction to integer, as this can sometimes lead to unexpected results.

echo (int) ( (0.1+0.7) * 10 ); // echoes 7!

See for more information the warning about float-precision.

From strings

See String conversion

From other types

Предостережение

Behaviour of converting to integer is undefined for other types. Currently, the behaviour is the same as if the value was first converted to boolean. However, do not rely on this behaviour, as it can change without notice.

Floating point numbers

Floating point numbers (AKA "floats", "doubles" or "real numbers") can be specified using any of the following syntaxes:

$a = 1.234; $a = 1.2e3; $a = 7E-10;

The size of a float is platform-dependent, although a maximum of ~1.8e308 with a precision of roughly 14 decimal digits is a common value (that's 64 bit IEEE format).

Floating point precision

It is quite usual that simple decimal fractions like 0.1 or 0.7 cannot be converted into their internal binary counterparts without a little loss of precision. This can lead to confusing results: for example, floor((0.1+0.7)*10) will usually return 7 instead of the expected 8 as the result of the internal representation really being something like 7.9999999999....

This is related to the fact that it is impossible to exactly express some fractions in decimal notation with a finite number of digits. For instance, 1/3 in decimal form becomes 0.3333333. . ..

So never trust floating number results to the last digit and never compare floating point numbers for equality. If you really need higher precision, you should use the arbitrary precision math functions or gmp functions instead.

Strings

A string is series of characters. In PHP, a character is the same as a byte, that is, there are exactly 256 different characters possible. This also implies that PHP has no native support of Unicode.

Замечание: It is no problem for a string to become very large. There is no practical bound to the size of strings imposed by PHP, so there is no reason at all to worry about long strings.

Syntax

A string literal can be specified in three different ways. single quoted double quoted heredoc syntax

Single quoted

The easiest way to specify a simple string is to enclose it in single quotes (the character ').

To specify a literal single quote, you will need to escape it with a backslash (\), like in many other languages. If a backslash needs to occur before a single quote or at the end of the string, you need to double it. Note that if you try to escape any other character, the backslash too will be printed! So usually there is no need to escape the backslash itself.

Замечание: In PHP 3, a warning will be issued at the E_NOTICE level when this happens.

Замечание: Unlike the two other syntaxes, variables will not be expanded when they occur in single quoted strings.

echo 'this is a simple string';
echo 'You can also have embedded newlines in strings,
like this way.';
echo 'Arnold once said: "I\'ll be back"';
// output: ... "I'll be back"
echo 'Are you sure you want to delete C:\\*.*?';
// output: ... delete C:\*.*?
echo 'Are you sure you want to delete C:\*.*?';
// output: ... delete C:\*.*?
echo 'I am trying to include at this point: \n a newline';
// output: ... this point: \n a newline

Double quoted

If the string is enclosed in double-quotes ("), PHP understands more escape sequences for special characters:

Escaped characters

sequence	meaning
\n	linefeed (LF or 0x0A (10) in ASCII)
\r	carriage return (CR or 0x0D (13) in ASCII)
\t	horizontal tab (HT or 0x09 (9) in ASCII)
\\	backslash
\$	dollar sign
\"	double-quote
\[0-7]{1,3}	the sequence of characters matching the regular expression is a character in octal notation
\x[0-9A-Fa- f]{1,2}	the sequence of characters matching the regular expression is a character in hexadecimal notation

Again, if you try to escape any other character, the backslash will be printed too!

But the most important pre of double-quoted strings is the fact that variable names will be expanded. See string parsing for details.

Heredoc

Another way to delimit strings is by using heredoc syntax ("<<<"). One should provide an identifier after <<<, then the string, and then the same identifier to close the quotation.

The closing identifier must begin in the first column of the line. Also, the identifier used must follow the same naming rules as any other label in PHP: it must contain only alphanumeric characters and underscores, and must start with a non-digit character or underscore.

Внимание

It is very important to note that the line with the closing identifier contains no other characters, except possibly a semicolon (;). That means especially that the identifier may not be indented, and there may not be any spaces or tabs after or before the semicolon.

Heredoc text behaves just like a double-quoted string, without the double-quotes. This means that you do not need to escape quotes in your here docs, but you can still use the escape codes listed above. Variables are expanded, but the same care must be taken when expressing complex variables inside a here doc as with strings.

Пример 2. Heredoc string quoting example

<?php
$str = <<<EOD
Example of string
spanning multiple lines
using heredoc syntax.
EOD;

/* More complex example, with variables. */
class foo
{
    var $foo;
    var $bar;

    function foo()
    {
        $this->foo = 'Foo';
        $this->bar = array('Bar1', 'Bar2', 'Bar3');
    }
}

$foo = new foo();
$name = 'MyName';

echo <<<EOT
My name is "$name". I am printing some $foo->foo.
Now, I am printing some {$foo->bar[1]}.
This should print a capital 'A': \x41
EOT;
?>

Замечание: Heredoc support was added in PHP 4.

Variable parsing

When a string is specified in double quotes or with heredoc, variables are parsed within it.

There are two types of syntax, a simple one and a complex one. The simple syntax is the most common and convenient, it provides a way to parse a variable, an array value, or an object property.

The complex syntax was introduced in PHP 4, and can be recognised by the curly braces surrounding the expression.

Simple syntax

If a dollar sign ($) is encountered, the parser will greedily take as much tokens as possible to form a valid variable name. Enclose the variable name in curly braces if you want to explicitly specify the end of the name.

$beer = 'Heineken';
echo "$beer's taste is great"; // works, "'" is an invalid character for varnames
echo "He drank some $beers"; // won't work, 's' is a valid character for varnames
echo "He drank some ${beer}s"; // works

Similarly, you can also have an array index or an object property parsed. With array indices, the closing square bracket (]) marks the end of the index. For object properties the same rules apply as to simple variables, though with object properties there doesn't exist a trick like the one with variables.

$fruits = array( 'strawberry' => 'red' , 'banana' => 'yellow' );

// note that this works differently outside string-quotes.
echo "A banana is $fruits[banana].";

echo "This square is $square->width meters broad.";

// Won't work. For a solution, see the complex syntax.
echo "This square is $square->width00 centimeters broad.";

For anything more complex, you should use the complex syntax.

Complex (curly) syntax

This isn't called complex because the syntax is complex, but because you can include complex expressions this way.

In fact, you can include any value that is in the namespace in strings with this syntax. You simply write the expression the same way as you would outside the string, and then include it in { and }. Since you can't escape '{', this syntax will only be recognised when the $ is immediately following the {. (Use "{\$" or "\{$" to get a literal "{$"). Some examples to make it clear:

$great = 'fantastic';
echo "This is { $great}"; // won't work, outputs: This is { fantastic}
echo "This is {$great}";  // works, outputs: This is fantastic
echo "This square is {$square->width}00 centimeters broad.";
echo "This works: {$arr[4][3]}";

// This is wrong for the same reason
// as $foo[bar] is wrong outside a string.
echo "This is wrong: {$arr[foo][3]}";

echo "You should do it this way: {$arr['foo'][3]}";
echo "You can even write {$obj->values[3]->name}";
echo "This is the value of the var named $name: {${$name}}";

String access by character

Characters within strings may be accessed by specifying the zero-based offset of the desired character after the string in curly braces.

Замечание: For backwards compatibility, you can still use the array-braces. However, this syntax is deprecated as of PHP 4.

Пример 3. Some string examples

<?php
/* Assigning a string. */
$str = "This is a string";

/* Appending to it. */
$str = $str . " with some more text";

/* Another way to append, includes an escaped newline. */
$str .= " and a newline at the end.\n";

/* This string will end up being '<p>Number: 9</p>' */
$num = 9;
$str = "<p>Number: $num</p>";

/* This one will be '<p>Number: $num</p>' */
$num = 9;
$str = '<p>Number: $num</p>';

/* Get the first character of a string  */
$str = 'This is a test.';
$first = $str{0};

/* Get the last character of a string. */
$str = 'This is still a test.';
$last = $str{strlen($str)-1};
?>

Useful functions

Strings may be concatenated using the '.' (dot) operator. Note that the '+' (addition) operator will not work for this. Please see String operators for more information.

There are a lot of useful functions for string modification.

See the string functions section for general functions, the regular expression functions for advanced find&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;replacing (in two tastes: Perl and POSIX extended).

There are also functions for URL-strings, and functions to encrypt/decrypt strings (mcrypt and mhash).

Finally, if you still didn't find what you're looking for, see also the character type functions.

String conversion

When a string is evaluated as a numeric value, the resulting value and type are determined as follows.

The string will evaluate as a float if it contains any of the characters '.', 'e', or 'E'. Otherwise, it will evaluate as an integer.

The value is given by the initial portion of the string. If the string starts with valid numeric data, this will be the value used. Otherwise, the value will be 0 (zero). Valid numeric data is an optional sign, followed by one or more digits (optionally containing a decimal point), followed by an optional exponent. The exponent is an 'e' or 'E' followed by one or more digits.

$foo = 1 + "10.5";              // $foo is float (11.5)
$foo = 1 + "-1.3e3";            // $foo is float (-1299)
$foo = 1 + "bob-1.3e3";         // $foo is integer (1)
$foo = 1 + "bob3";              // $foo is integer (1)
$foo = 1 + "10 Small Pigs";     // $foo is integer (11)
$foo = 4 + "10.2 Little Piggies"; // $foo is float (14.2)
$foo = "10.0 pigs " + 1;        // $foo is float (11)
$foo = "10.0 pigs " + 1.0;      // $foo is float (11)

For more information on this conversion, see the Unix manual page for strtod(3).

If you would like to test any of the examples in this section, you can cut and paste the examples and insert the following line to see for yourself what's going on:

echo "\$foo==$foo; type is " . gettype ($foo) . "<br />\n";

Arrays

An array in PHP is actually an ordered map. A map is a type that maps values to keys. This type is optimized in several ways, so you can use it as a real array, or a list (vector), hashtable (which is an implementation of a map), dictionary, collection, stack, queue and probably more. Because you can have another PHP-array as a value, you can also quite easily simulate trees.

Explanation of those structures is beyond the scope of this manual, but you'll find at least one example for each of those structures. For more information about those structures, we refer you to external literature about this broad topic.

Syntax

Specifying with array()

An array can be created by the array() language-construct. It takes a certain number of comma- separated key => value pairs.

A key is either an integer or a string. If a key is the standard representation of an integer, it will be interpreted as such (i.e. "8" will be interpreted as 8, while "08" will be interpreted as "08").

A value can be anything.

If you omit a key, the maximum of the integer-indices is taken, and the new key will be that maximum + 1. As integers can be negative, this is also true for negative indices. Having e.g. the highest index being -6 will result in being -5 the new key. If no integer-indices exist yet, the key will be 0 (zero). If you specify a key that already has a value assigned to it, that value will be overwritten.

Using true as a key will evalute to integer 1 as key. Using false as a key will evalute to integer 0 as key. Using NULL as a key will evaluate to an empty string. Using an emptry string as key will create (or overwrite) a key with an empty string and its value, it is not the same as using empty brackets.

You cannot use arrays or objects as keys. Doing so will result in a warning: Illegal offset type.

array( [key =>] value
     , ...
     )
// key is either string or nonnegative integer
// value can be anything

Creating/modifying with square-bracket syntax

You can also modify an existing array, by explicitly setting values.

This is done by assigning values to the array while specifying the key in brackets. You can also omit the key, add an empty pair of brackets ("[]") to the variable-name in that case.

$arr[key] = value;
$arr[] = value;
// key is either string or nonnegative integer
// value can be anything

If $arr doesn't exist yet, it will be created. So this is also an alternative way to specify an array. To change a certain value, just assign a new value to it. If you want to remove a key/value pair, you need to unset() it.

Useful functions

There are quite some useful function for working with arrays, see the array-functions section.

Замечание: The unset() function allows unsetting keys of an array. Be aware that the array will NOT be reindexed.

$a = array( 1 => 'one', 2 => 'two', 3 => 'three' );
unset( $a[2] );
/* will produce an array that would have been defined as
   $a = array( 1=>'one', 3=>'three');
   and NOT
   $a = array( 1 => 'one', 2 => 'three');
*/

The foreach control structure exists specifically for arrays. It provides an easy way to traverse an array.

Array do's and don'ts

Why is $foo[bar] wrong?

You should always use quotes around an associative array index. For example, use $foo['bar'] and not $foo[bar]. But why is $foo[bar] wrong? You might have seen the following syntax in old scripts:

$foo[bar] = 'enemy';
echo $foo[bar];
// etc

This is wrong, but it works. Then, why is it wrong? The reason is that this code has an undefined constant (bar) rather than a string ('bar' - notice the quotes), and PHP may in future define constants which, unfortunately for your code, have the same name. It works, because the undefined constant gets converted to a string of the same name.

As stated in the syntax section, there must be an expression between the square brackets ('[' and ']'). That means that you can write things like this:

echo $arr[ foo(true) ];

This is an example of using a function return value as the array index. PHP knows also about constants, and you may have seen the E_* before.

$error_descriptions[E_ERROR] = "A fatal error has occured";
$error_descriptions[E_WARNING] = "PHP issued a warning";
$error_descriptions[E_NOTICE] = "This is just an informal notice";

Note that E_ERROR is also a valid identifier, just like bar in the first example. But the last example is in fact the same as writing:

$error_descriptions[1] = "A fatal error has occured";
$error_descriptions[2] = "PHP issued a warning";
$error_descriptions[8] = "This is just an informal notice";

because E_ERROR equals 1, etc.

Then, how is it possible that $foo[bar] works? It works, because bar is due to its syntax expected to be a constant expression. However, in this case no constant with the name bar exists. PHP now assumes that you meant bar literally, as the string "bar", but that you forgot to write the quotes.

So why is it bad then?

At some point in the future, the PHP team might want to add another constant or keyword, and then you get in trouble. For example, you already cannot use the words empty and default this way, since they are special reserved keywords.

Замечание: When you turn error_reporting to E_ALL, you will see that PHP generates notices whenever an index is used which is not defined (put the line error_reporting(E_ALL); in your script).

Замечание: Inside a double-quoted string, an other syntax is valid. See variable parsing in strings for more details.

Examples

The array type in PHP is very versatile, so here will be some examples to show you the full power of arrays.

// this
$a = array( 'color' => 'red'
          , 'taste' => 'sweet'
          , 'shape' => 'round'
          , 'name'  => 'apple'
          ,            4        // key will be 0
          );

// is completely equivalent with
$a['color'] = 'red';
$a['taste'] = 'sweet';
$a['shape'] = 'round';
$a['name'] = 'apple';
$a[]        = 4;        // key will be 0

$b[] = 'a';
$b[] = 'b';
$b[] = 'c';
// will result in the array array( 0 => 'a' , 1 => 'b' , 2 => 'c' ),
// or simply array('a', 'b', 'c')

Пример 4. Using array()

// Array as (property-)map
$map = array( 'version'    => 4
            , 'OS'         => 'Linux'
            , 'lang'       => 'english'
            , 'short_tags' => true
            );

// strictly numerical keys
$array = array( 7
              , 8
              , 0
              , 156
              , -10
              );
// this is the same as array( 0 => 7, 1 => 8, ...)

$switching = array(         10 // key = 0
                  , 5    =>  6
                  , 3    =>  7
                  , 'a'  =>  4
                  ,         11 // key = 6 (maximum of integer-indices was 5)
                  , '8'  =>  2 // key = 8 (integer!)
                  , '02' => 77 // key = '02'
                  , 0    => 12 // the value 10 will be overwritten by 12
                  );

// empty array
$empty = array();

Пример 5. Collection

$colors = array('red','blue','green','yellow');

foreach ( $colors as $color ) {
    echo "Do you like $color?\n";
}

/* output:
Do you like red?
Do you like blue?
Do you like green?
Do you like yellow?
*/

Note that it is currently not possible to change the values of the array directly in such a loop. A workaround is the following:

Пример 6. Collection

foreach ($colors as $key => $color) {
    // won't work:
    //$color = strtoupper($color);

    //works:
    $colors[$key] = strtoupper($color);
}
print_r($colors);

/* output:
Array
(
    [0] => RED
    [1] => BLUE
    [2] => GREEN
    [3] => YELLOW
)
*/

This example creates a one-based array.

Пример 7. One-based index

$firstquarter  = array(1 => 'January', 'February', 'March');
print_r($firstquarter);

/* output:
Array
(
    [1] => 'January'
    [2] => 'February'
    [3] => 'March'
)
*/

Пример 8. Filling real array

// fill an array with all items from a directory
$handle = opendir('.');
while ($file = readdir($handle))
{
    $files[] = $file;
}
closedir($handle);

Arrays are ordered. You can also change the order using various sorting-functions. See array- functions for more information.

Пример 9. Sorting array

sort($files);
print_r($files);

Because the value of an array can be everything, it can also be another array. This way you can make recursive and multi-dimensional arrays.

Пример 10. Recursive and multi-dimensional arrays

$fruits = array ( "fruits"  => array ( "a" => "orange"
                                     , "b" => "banana"
                                     , "c" => "apple"
                                     )
                , "numbers" => array ( 1
                                     , 2
                                     , 3
                                     , 4
                                     , 5
                                     , 6
                                     )
                , "holes"   => array (      "first"
                                     , 5 => "second"
                                     ,      "third"
                                     )
                );

Objects

Object Initialization

To initialize an object, you use the new statement to instantiate the object to a variable.

<?php
class foo
{
    function do_foo()
    {
        echo "Doing foo.";
    }
}

$bar = new foo;
$bar->do_foo();
?>

For a full discussion, please read the section Classes and Objects.

Resource

A resource is a special variable, holding a reference to an external resource. Resources are created and used by special functions. See the appendix for a listing of all these functions and the corresponding resource types.

Замечание: The resource type was introduced in PHP 4

Freeing resources

Due to the reference-counting system introduced with PHP4's Zend-engine, it is automatically detected when a resource is no longer referred to (just like Java). When this is the case, all resources that were in use for this resource are made free by the garbage collector. For this reason, it is rarely ever necessary to free the memory manually by using some free_result function.

Замечание: Persistent database-links are special, they are not destroyed by the gc. See also persistent links

NULL

The special NULL value represents that a variable has no value. NULL is the only possible value of type NULL.

Замечание: The null type was introduced in PHP 4

A variable is considered to be NULL if

it has been assigned the constant NULL.

it has not been set to any value yet.

it has been unset().

Syntax

There is only one value of type NULL, and that is the case-insensitive keyword NULL.

$var = NULL;

See also is_null() and unset().

Type Juggling

PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which that variable is used. That is to say, if you assign a string value to variable var, var becomes a string. If you then assign an integer value to var, it becomes an integer.

An example of PHP's automatic type conversion is the addition operator '+'. If any of the operands is a float, then all operands are evaluated as floats, and the result will be a float. Otherwise, the operands will be interpreted as integers, and the result will also be an integer. Note that this does NOT change the types of the operands themselves; the only change is in how the operands are evaluated.

$foo = "0";  // $foo is string (ASCII 48)

$foo += 2;   // $foo is now an integer (2)
$foo = $foo + 1.3;  // $foo is now a float (3.3)
$foo = 5 + "10 Little Piggies"; // $foo is integer (15)
$foo = 5 + "10 Small Pigs";     // $foo is integer (15)

If the last two examples above seem odd, see String conversion.

If you wish to force a variable to be evaluated as a certain type, see the section on Type casting. If you wish to change the type of a variable, see settype().

If you would like to test any of the examples in this section, you can use the var_dump() function.

Замечание: The behaviour of an automatic conversion to array is currently undefined.

$a = "1";     // $a is a string
$a[0] = "f";  // What about string offsets? What happens?

Since PHP supports indexing into strings via offsets using the same syntax as array indexing, the example above leads to a problem: should $a become an array with its first element being "f", or should "f" become the first character of the string $a?

For this reason, as of PHP 3.0.12 and PHP 4.0b3-RC4, the result of this automatic conversion is considered to be undefined. Fixes are, however, being discussed.

Type Casting

Type casting in PHP works much as it does in C: the name of the desired type is written in parentheses before the variable which is to be cast.

$foo = 10;   // $foo is an integer
$bar = (float) $foo;   // $bar is a float

The casts allowed are:

(int), (integer) - cast to integer

(bool), (boolean) - cast to boolean

(float), (double), (real) - cast to float

(string) - cast to string

(array) - cast to array

(object) - cast to object

Замечание: Instead of casting a variable to string, you can also enclose the variable in double quotes.

Note that tabs and spaces are allowed inside the parentheses, so the following are functionally equivalent:

$foo = (int) $bar;
$foo = ( int ) $bar;

It may not be obvious exactly what will happen when casting between certain types. For more info, see these sections:

Converting to boolean

Converting to integer

When casting or forcing a conversion from array to string, the result will be the word Array. When casting or forcing a conversion from object to string, the result will be the word Object.

When casting from a scalar or a string variable to an array, the variable will become the first element of the array:

$var = 'ciao';
$arr = (array) $var;
echo $arr[0];  // outputs 'ciao'

When casting from a scalar or a string variable to an object, the variable will become an attribute of the object; the attribute name will be 'scalar':

$var = 'ciao';
$obj = (object) $var;
echo $obj->scalar;  // outputs 'ciao'