Increment behavior on strings - PHP easter egg?

Question

$var = \'test_1\';
var_dump(++$var); // string(6) \"test_2\" 

$var2 = \'1_test\';
var_dump(++$var2); // string(6) \"1_tesu\"

$var3 = \'test_z\';
var_dump(++$var3);         


        

Answer 1

It's not an Easter egg. It's expected in PHP, but no it's not common in other languages. (At least not incrementing letters.) PHP treats strings containing a number the same as numbers in most cases. So you can also "2" * "2" for example.