Null vs. False vs. 0 in PHP

Question

I am told that good developers can spot/utilize the difference between Null and False and 0 and all the other good "nothing" entities.
What is the difference, specifically in PHP? Does it have something to do with ===?

Answer 1

It's language specific, but in PHP :

Null means "nothing". The var has not been initialized.

False means "not true in a boolean context". Used to explicitly show you are dealing with logical issues.

0 is an int. Nothing to do with the rest above, used for mathematics.

Now, what is tricky, it's that in dynamic languages like PHP, all of them have a value in a boolean context, which (in PHP) is False.

If you test it with ==, it's testing the boolean value, so you will get equality. If you test it with ===, it will test the type, and you will get inequality.

So why are they useful ?

Well, look at the strrpos() function. It returns False if it did not found anything, but 0 if it has found something at the beginning of the string !

<?php
// pitfall :
if (strrpos("Hello World", "Hello")) { 
    // never exectuted
}

// smart move :
if (strrpos("Hello World", "Hello") !== False) {
    // that works !
}
?>

And of course, if you deal with states:

You want to make a difference between DebugMode = False (set to off), DebugMode = True (set to on) and DebugMode = Null (not set at all, will lead to hard debugging ;-)).

Answer 2

null is null. false is false. Sad but true.

there's not much consistency in PHP (though it is improving on latest releases, there's too much backward compatibility). Despite the design wishing some consistency (outlined in the selected answer here), it all get confusing when you consider method returns that use false/null in not-so-easy to reason ways.

You will often see null being used when they are already using false for something. e.g. filter_input(). They return false if the variable fails the filter, and null if the variable does not exists (does not existing means it also failed the filter?)

Methods returning false/null/string/etc interchangeably is a hack when the author care about the type of failure, for example, with filter_input() you can check for ===false or ===null if you care why the validation failed. But if you don't it might be a pitfall as one might forget to add the check for ===null if they only remembered to write the test case for ===false. And most php unit test/coverage tools will not call your attention for the missing, untested code path!

Lastly, here's some fun with type juggling. not even including arrays or objects.

var_dump( 0<0 );        #bool(false)
var_dump( 1<0 );        #bool(false)
var_dump( -1<0 );       #bool(true)
var_dump( false<0 );    #bool(false)
var_dump( null<0 );     #bool(false)
var_dump( ''<0 );       #bool(false)
var_dump( 'a'<0 );      #bool(false)
echo "\n";
var_dump( !0 );        #bool(true)
var_dump( !1 );        #bool(false)
var_dump( !-1 );       #bool(false)
var_dump( !false );    #bool(true)
var_dump( !null );     #bool(true)
var_dump( !'' );       #bool(true)
var_dump( !'a' );      #bool(false)
echo "\n";
var_dump( false == 0 );        #bool(true)
var_dump( false == 1 );        #bool(false)
var_dump( false == -1 );       #bool(false)
var_dump( false == false );    #bool(true)
var_dump( false == null );     #bool(true)
var_dump( false == '' );       #bool(true)
var_dump( false == 'a' );      #bool(false)
echo "\n";
var_dump( null == 0 );        #bool(true)
var_dump( null == 1 );        #bool(false)
var_dump( null == -1 );       #bool(false)
var_dump( null == false );    #bool(true)
var_dump( null == null );     #bool(true)
var_dump( null == '' );       #bool(true)
var_dump( null == 'a' );      #bool(false)
echo "\n";
$a=0; var_dump( empty($a) );        #bool(true)
$a=1; var_dump( empty($a) );        #bool(false)
$a=-1; var_dump( empty($a) );       #bool(false)
$a=false; var_dump( empty($a) );    #bool(true)
$a=null; var_dump( empty($a) );     #bool(true)
$a=''; var_dump( empty($a) );       #bool(true)
$a='a'; var_dump( empty($a));      # bool(false)
echo "\n"; #new block suggested by @thehpi
var_dump( null < -1 ); #bool(true)
var_dump( null < 0 ); #bool(false)
var_dump( null < 1 ); #bool(true)
var_dump( -1 > true ); #bool(false)
var_dump( 0 > true ); #bool(false)
var_dump( 1 > true ); #bool(true)
var_dump( -1 > false ); #bool(true)
var_dump( 0 > false ); #bool(false)
var_dump( 1 > true ); #bool(true)