For that use, you would need to use a pre-increment rather than post-increment operator. With your original code, using a post-increment, the expression $test++ evaluates to 1 (this is used for the assignment) then the value is incremented. With a pre-increment, the expression ++$test evaluates to 2 which is used in the assignment to $test2

Full details: http://php.net/operators.increment

P.S. xenon beat me to it, both posts say the same thing.