Code challenge advice!!

Hey Miguel,

The second part of the challenge is basically asking you to set a variable, although the challenge does tend to create some confusion about what it's actually asking for.

The working code is:

<?php
$a = 5;
//Place your code below this comment

$booleanOne = true;

$booleanTwo = $a === "5";

?>

Notice that the variable $booleanTwo is created, then it is assigned a value of $a identical (three equals signs) to the string "5".

Good luck with the course!

Hey again Miguel,

I just want to clarify that the code I supplied is what the challenge wanted you to type in :D

The challenge asked that we assign the variable $booleanTwo a statement reading:

$a === "5"

Which is really just a really convoluted way of showing how to compare a variable's type and value to another variable/value, while also serving the purpose of returning 'false' as the result of the assignment.

Since the double quotes surround the 5 in the assignment, the five becomes a string containing the character 5.

The identical operator ( === ) checks to see if the values/variables on both sides of the operator have the same value -and- the same type (string, integer, boolean etc).

Since a string character 5 is not identical to the integer 5 assigned to the $a variable at the top of the code challenge, the $a === "5" assignment will evaluate to false.

So basically, the variable $booleanTwo is asking the parser "Is this 5 (integer) the exact same as this 5 (string)?" and the parser is inspecting them and revealing that they are not identical because they have different types.

Since the two values are not identical, the final result of the assignment statement will be:

$booleanTwo = false;

Hope this helps clear that up a little :D

Wow those code challenges will try to trick you by forcing you to really think lol I didn't realize my mistake until I realized What they wanted exactly until you explained it to me ok it makes since then thanks Daniel.

Thanks for the explanation Daniel. I would have never figured that out.