note 109504 added to language.expressions

phvandeberghe, while it is true that the asterik can return different results the reason you see that many results in your code example is because your forgot something very important in the switch statement. Switch starts executing the code beginning with the first match and continues to execute the code until the whole switch statement ends or it encounters a break. So your code should look like: <?php $a = '*'; switch($a) { case 1: echo ' (int)one'; break; case 0: echo ' (int)zero'; break; case '0': echo ' (string)zero'; break; case '*': echo ' (string)star'; break; case true: echo ' (bool)true'; break; case false: echo ' (bool)false'; break; } // ouput // (int)zero ?> but still that wouldn't be correct if you want to check all possible "result" you can have with an asterik. What you probably wanted is something like: <?php $a = '*'; if ($a == 1) { echo " (int)one;"; } if ($a == 0) { echo " (int)zero;"; } if ($a == '0') { echo " (string)zero;"; } if ($a == '*') { echo " (string)asterik;"; } if ($a == true) { echo " (bool)true;"; } if ($a == false) { echo " (bool)false;"; } // ouput // (int)zero; (string)asterik; (bool)true; ?> which returns: - (int)zero because every string that is not a number in string format returns 0 as number; - (string)asterik because the string is equal; - (bool)true because every defined variable that is not explicitly false or the number 0 (not through conversion) is true; ---- Server IP: 69.147.83.197 Probable Submitter: 217.70.192.223 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.expressions.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/109504 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/109504/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/109504/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/109504/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/109504/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/109504/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/109504/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/109504 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/109504 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php