PHP Does if (count($array)) and if ($array) mean the same thing?

Question

Hi

In PHP, will these always return the same values?

//example 1

$array = array();

if ($array) {
   echo 'the array has items';

}

// example 2

$array = array();

if (count($array)) {
   echo 'the array has items';

}

Thank you!

Answer 1

From http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.boolean.php, it says that an empty array is considered FALSE.

---

(Quoted): When converting to boolean, the following values are considered FALSE:

• the boolean FALSE itself
• the integer 0 (zero)
• the float 0.0 (zero)
• the empty string, and the string "0"
• an array with zero elements
• an object with zero member variables (PHP 4 only)
• the special type NULL (including unset variables)
• SimpleXML objects created from empty tags

---

Since

• a count() of > 0 IS NOT FALSE
• a filled array IS NOT FALSE

then both cases illustrated in the question will always work as expected.

Answer 2

Indeed they will. Converting an array to a bool will give you true if it is non-empty, and the count of an array is true with more than one element.

See also: http://ca2.php.net/manual/en/language.types.boolean.php#language.types.boolean.casting

Answer 3

Note that the second example (using count()) is significantly slower, by at least 50% on my system (over 10000 iterations). count() actually counts the elements of an array. I'm not positive, but I imagine casting an array to a boolean works much like empty(), and stops as soon as it finds at least one element.

Answer 4

Those will always return the same value, but I find

$array = array();

if (empty($array)) {
   echo 'the array is empty';
}

to be a lot more readable.