PHP remove first zeros

Question

Want to remove all 0 placed at the beginning of some variable.

Some options:

1. if $var = 0002, we should strip first 000 ($var = 2)
2. if var = 0203410 we should remove first 0 ($var = 203410)
3. if var = 20000 - do nothing ($var = 20000)

What is the solution?

Answer 1

Maybe ltrim?

$var = ltrim($var, '0');

Answer 2

cast it to integer

$var = (int)$var;

Answer 3

$var = strval(intval($var));

or if you don't care about it remaining a string, just convert to int and leave it at that.

Answer 4

$var = ltrim($var, '0');

This only works on strings, numbers starting with a 0 will be interpreted as octal numbers, multiple zero's are ignored.