note 118616 added to function.date

I just wanted to emphasise that the return value of date( ) is a string, even when the result of your date format string is a number, such as "j" -> a number 1 to 31, or 'N' -> a day number 1 for Monday through 7 for Sunday... it's still returned as a string! "1" or "7" or "31". This is much more obvious on the "zero-padded" results, but it's worth repeating. If you aren't careful, you can get stuck in a while loop comparing days of the week with something like: <?php // Evil! Don't use this! This will never return! while ( date('N', $time ) !== 7 ) { $time = $time - 86400; } ?> ... for example. The result of date( ) should be cast to an int for numeric comparison with the exact equality operator: <?php // Works! while ( (int)date('N', $time ) !== 7 ) { $time = $time - 86400; } ?> Wasted an hour today on that silly mistake. ---- Server IP: 72.52.91.14 Probable Submitter: 71.36.176.57 ---- Manual Page -- http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/118616 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/118616/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/118616/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/118616/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/118616/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/118616/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/118616/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/118616 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/118616 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php