[Resolved] Switch statements

[Calahan]

This is an old problem that I thought I had fixed. I hadn't thought about months with 2 digits in them like Nov and Dec.
I'm trying to convert a month submitted as a string into a decimal equivalent.
Drew10 suggested the following fix

switch(substr(strtolower($_POST['month_stats']), 0, 3)) { 
case "jan": $month_decimal = 1; break; 
case "feb": $month_decimal = 2; break; 
case "mar": $month_decimal = 3; break; 
case "apr" : $month_decimal = 4; break; 
case "may": $month_decimal = 5; break; 
case "jun" : $month_decimal = 6; break; 
case "jul" : $month_decimal = 7; break; 
case "aug": $month_decimal = 8; break; 
case "sep": $month_decimal = 9; break; 
case "oct" : $month_decimal = 10; break; 
case "nov": $month_decimal = 11; break; 
case "dec": $month_decimal = 12; break; 
}

which I adapted to my needs as follows:

switch($_POST['month_stats'])
{
case "January": $month_decimal = 01; break;
case "February": $month_decimal = 02; break;
case "March": $month_decimal = 03; break;
case "April" : $month_decimal = 04; break;
case "May": $month_decimal = 05; break;
case "June" : $month_decimal = 06; break;
case "July" : $month_decimal = 07; break;
case "August": $month_decimal = 08; break;
case "September": $month_decimal = 09; break;
case "October" : $month_decimal = 10; break;
case "November": $month_decimal = 11; break;
case "December": $month_decimal = 12; break;
}

The allocated numbers - 01, 02, etc isn't being allocated to the $month_decimal variable so when I use the $month_decimal variable in the query it becomes 6 instead of 06 for each of the single digit dates.
Any ideas how (or why) the allocated values for the $month_decimal are being interpreted as single digits or how I can fix it?

[AstroTeg]

Let's look at this chunk of code:

$month_decimal = 02;

Here, $month_decimal is being assigned an integer. As you know, any number with a zero in front is just itself (02 = 2, 002 = 2, 00002 = 2, etc). This is what PH is doing.

Instead, you may want to make it a string:

$month_decimal = '02';

Now PHP will see this as a string. If you're doing numeric tricks, a string may cause you problems, but for this example, this will work.

[Calahan]

Got it.
I know these are dumb questions but it is all slowly starting to make sense. 🙂

Thanks for your help.