Comparing two integers in php

Question

I need to compare two integers in PHP. I have this example:

$a=00713132161838;
$b=713132161838;

How can I get this comparison true? I need to delete leading zeros from $a.

I used the number_format function:

echo number_format($a,0,"","");
120370289

Why this??

Answer 1

leading zero to a number in php is Octal number, and it print 120370289 which is the decimal equivalent of 00713132161838 . In php there are two kinds of comparison thus,

(`00713132161838`==713132161838) // return true
(`00713132161838`===713132161838) // return false and strict comparison
(00713132161838==713132161838) 
// this will never give you true value because 007.....8 is the octal, number first converted to decimal and comparison will be there

so you can make use of single/double quote to wrap the numbers and then convert them to decimal integer value by using intval for more information you may need to read intval function in php

Answer 2

you can delete leading zero by ltrim

example -

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