PHP supports C-style pre- and post-increment and decrement operators.
Note: The increment/decrement operators do not affect boolean values. Decrementing NULL values has no effect too, but incrementing them results in 1.
| Example | Name | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| ++$a | Pre-increment | Increments $a by one, then returns $a. |
| $a++ | Post-increment | Returns $a, then increments $a by one. |
| --$a | Pre-decrement | Decrements $a by one, then returns $a. |
| $a-- | Post-decrement | Returns $a, then decrements $a by one. |
Here's a simple example script:
<?php
echo "<h3>Postincrement</h3>";
$a = 5;
echo "Should be 5: " . $a++ . "<br />\n";
echo "Should be 6: " . $a . "<br />\n";
echo "<h3>Preincrement</h3>";
$a = 5;
echo "Should be 6: " . ++$a . "<br />\n";
echo "Should be 6: " . $a . "<br />\n";
echo "<h3>Postdecrement</h3>";
$a = 5;
echo "Should be 5: " . $a-- . "<br />\n";
echo "Should be 4: " . $a . "<br />\n";
echo "<h3>Predecrement</h3>";
$a = 5;
echo "Should be 4: " . --$a . "<br />\n";
echo "Should be 4: " . $a . "<br />\n";
?>
PHP follows Perl's convention when dealing with arithmetic operations on character variables and not C's. For example, in Perl 'Z'+1 turns into 'AA', while in C 'Z'+1 turns into '[' ( ord('Z') == 90, ord('[') == 91 ). Note that character variables can be incremented but not decremented and even so only plain ASCII characters (a-z and A-Z) are supported.
Example#1 Arithmetic Operations on Character Variables
<?php
$i = 'W';
for ($n=0; $n<6; $n++) {
echo ++$i . "\n";
}
?>
The above example will output:
X
Y
Z
AA
AB
AC
Incrementing or decrementing booleans has no effect.