The usual practice when checking for the return value of functions is to run the function and store the value in a variable, and then test that variable. Here is an example of that process using the strstr() function.

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$string = 'abcde';
$var = strstr($string, 'f');
if ( false !==  $var ) {
    var_dump($var);
} else {
    var_dump($var);
}

This code will output "bool(false)" as that was the return value of the strstr() function.

If you are constructing a simple string from a set of variables contained in an array then you can use the implode function to convert the array into a string. The implode() function takes two parameters. The first is the glue that is used to join the items in array together and the second is the array to use. Here is a trivial example of implode() in action.

If you have programmed in PHP for any amount of time then you will be farmiliar with the if statement. The syntax is as follows: