In the earlier versions of PHP, if we wanted to get the type of a variable, we used to employ the gettype() function. This function returns the type of a variable in the custom of a string. It returns all possible values like integer, string, array, boolean, double, resource, NULL, unknown type, etc.
However, there were issues in the gettype function. It does not return native and familiar type names. It returns double instead of float and integer instead of int, and so on.
To overcome this problem, PHP 8 uses the get_debug_type function.
get_debug_type() function
In PHP 8, the get_debug_type function returns the true native type of variables. It returns a float, int instead of double and integer. This function automatically resolves the class names of objects.
get_debug_type() function helps in
debugging
business logic
error reporting
Example: using gettype() function in PHP
<?php
class Novel {}
class Comments {}
$novel = new Novel();
if(! ($novel instanceof Comment)) {
echo 'Expected ' . Comment::class . ' still got My' . (is_object($novel) ?
get_class($novel) : gettype($novel));
}
?>Output
Expected Comment still got MyNovel
Example : Using get_debug_type() function in PHP 8
<?php
class Novel {}
class Comments {}
$novel = new Novel();
if(! ($novel instanceof Comment)) {
echo 'Expected '.Comment::class.' still got My'.get_debug_type($novel);
}
?>Output
Expected Comment still got MyNovel