Curiously, I got a negative number for this - PHP breaking the rules of math?

What do $endDate and $startDate equal? What makes you think it's breaking the rules of mathematics?

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The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.

no matter what $endDate and $startDate equate to, abs() should make it positive. the absolute value of a negative is a positive.

When I do this, I get a positive number of 10.


$startDate = "20 September 2000";
$endDate = "10 September 2000";

$test = abs(ceil((strtotime($endDate) - strtotime($startDate)) / 86400));


echo $test;

Either your abs function is not working or something is happening to the data between the assigning and output. No real number can have a negative absolute value, an exception would have been thrown.

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try to do it manually, see if it produces the same result, if not there may be somethings b0rked with abs, don't quite know what mind you, but just limit the possible avenues of error.

gives me, int 10 (as does the original abs() implementation)

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mysql> SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`clue` > 0;
Empty set (0.00 sec)

To be frank, this thread is pointless unless it can be repeated. Does that code still return negative? What were the values of $startDate and $endDate which returned the negative value?