PHP - Get bool to echo false when false

Question

The following code doesn\'t print out anything:

$bool_val = (bool)false;
echo $bool_val;

But the following code prints 1:

Answer 1

The %b option of sprintf() will convert a boolean to an integer:

echo sprintf("False will print as %b", false); //False will print as 0
echo sprintf("True will print as %b", true); //True will print as 1

If you're not familiar with it: You can give this function an arbitrary amount of parameters while the first one should be your ouput string spiced with replacement strings like %b or %s for general string replacement.

Each pattern will be replaced by the argument in order:

echo sprintf("
%s
%s
%s
", "Neat Headline", "First Line in the paragraph", "My last words before this demo is over");