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How to do Type Conversion in PHP

Type conversion is nothing but change the data type of a variable one type to another. PHP automatically convert data type one to another whenever possible. For example if you assign string value into a variable then the variable automatically become into string variable . But sometime this automatic type conversion is lead unexpected result. For that case we need to convert the data type by manually. I hope you will enjoy it.

<?php
/**
 * @Author: Sohel Rana
 * @URL: http://www.sohelranabd.com
 * @Description: This is simple example of type conversion
 */

$stringVar = "10 Hello World"; //Integer variable
echo gettype($stringVar); // Knowing the data type of $stringVar

$intVar = (int)$stringVar;  //Converting into integer
echo $intVar;

This is called the type casting. But if you permanently change the type then you need to use “settype() function.

$stringVar = "10 Hello World"; //Integer variable
settype($stringVar,'integer'); // permanently change the type
echo gettype($stringVar); // Knowing the data type of $stringVar

This is the simple way to change the type. Remember this is also applicable for all data types (boolean,float, object, array, etc) of php.