The <=>
("Spaceship") operator will offer combined comparison in that it will :
Return 0 if values on either side are equal
Return 1 if the value on the left is greater
Return -1 if the value on the right is greater
The rules used by the combined comparison operator are the same as the currently used comparison operators by PHP viz. <
, <=
, ==
, >=
and >
. Those who are from Perl or Ruby programming background may already be familiar with this new operator proposed for PHP7.
//Comparing Integers
echo 1 <=> 1; //output 0
echo 3 <=> 4; //output -1
echo 4 <=> 3; //output 1
//String Comparison
echo "x" <=> "x"; //output 0
echo "x" <=> "y"; //output -1
echo "y" <=> "x"; //output 1