php not returning value of false

Question

I cannot get a false value to return here. A true value returns fine. What am I missing?

if ((count($this->_brokenRulesCollection)) == 0)  {
    return true;
} else {
    return false;
}

Answer 1

Well what is a $this->_brokenRulesCollection? is it an array or an object? if an object does it implement Countable or Iterator?

Answer 2

The code can just return false if the array $this->_brokenRulesCollection is not empty.

If $this->_brokenRulesCollection is not an array or an object with implemented Countable interface, then count($this->_brokenRulesCollection) will returned 1.

Answer 3

In PHP, false when converted to a string is an empty string, and true converted to a string is "1".

Use var_dump instead of echo for debugging.

Answer 4

In conditional expressions (unless you use the type matching operators === or !==) any non-zero integer is equivalent to true, any non-zero length string is equivalent to true and conversely, zero or a blank string are false.

So

if ((count($this->_brokenRulesCollection)) == 0)  {
   return true;
} else {
  return false;
}

Can be written as just:

return count($this->_brokenRulesCollection);

C.