testing for negative numbers

I realize this should be about the simplest thing in the world to do, but for this reason or that it's not working... I'm using PHP version 4.2.3 Whether I have a negative number in an array, for example: $myArray["ID"] = -2 Or the number comes from the database, for example: $row["id"] = -2 I cannot get this simple operation to work: if ($row["id"] < 0) Instead, positive or negative, it seems to think this expression is always true: if ($row["id"] > 0) It's like it takes the absolute value of the number (whether the number is 2 or -2, it thinks it is 2) I've tried many things, including type casting using (int) in front of the expression. Nothing has worked. Any ideas why in the world this is happening? Thanks.