The PHP Function Is_Scalar
The php function is_scalar is used to check whether the given variable is a scalar. Scalar variables contain an integer, float, string or boolean value. Variables which are scalar can be assigned values like 'Hello World' or 'Jdoe'. The PHP language is a loosely typed language and it's not required to declare the data types of variables at the time of creation. Rather, the variable is automatically assigned with a data type based on the value it holds. For example, assigning a value surrounded by quotes makes the variable to be of string type while the value 'true' or 'false' makes the variable to be of boolean data type.
The is_scalar function in PHP finds out if the variable has a scalar type and returns a Boolean value TRUE or FALSE. Using this function, developers can check whether the variable is of scalar type before performing any operations on it or to make sure that they are handling scalar and non-scalar values in a specific manner.
This is especially useful when working with dynamically-created variables, since the variable type isn't defined at the time of the variable's creation. In the absence of strict data typing and kind declarations, it may be possible to perform operations on variables with different data types and end up with a bug in the code. The is_scalar function can help prevent these bugs from happening by checking that the variable has a scalar data type.