Getting a true variable instead of a false in laravel

Question

I'm hoping someone can see where I'm going wrong. I have 3 pricing values projectBudget, projectOverflow, projectTotal, and what I'm trying to do is to create a check that will set a variable to true or false. So if my projectTotal is greater then the projectBudget but less then projectOverflow I need to set my projectWarning variable to true but if my projectTotal is greater then projectBudget and it's greater then projectOverflow I then need to set my projectDanger variable to true and my projectWarning to false.

The issue I'm having is that my projectWarning is true and my projectDanger is false even though my projectTotal is greater then projectBudget and projectOverflow

Here is my code

$projectBudget = number_format((float)$project->budget, 2) // 1
$projectOverflow = number_format((float)$project->overflow, 2) // 2
$projectTotal = number_format((float)$project->total, 2) // 1234

$projectWarning = false;
$projectDanger = false;

if($projectTotal > $projectBudget && $projectTotal < $projectOverflow)
{
    $projectWarning = true;
}

if($projectTotal > $projectOverflow)
{
    $projectDanger = true;
}

dd($projectWarning , $projectDanger);

Answer 1

Let's make a Minimal, Reproducible Example with just the first part of your code:

$project = new class {
    public $budget = 1;
    public $overflow = 2;
    public $total = 1234;
};

$projectBudget = number_format((float)$project->budget, 2); // 1
$projectOverflow = number_format((float)$project->overflow, 2); // 2
$projectTotal = number_format((float)$project->total, 2); // 1234

var_dump($projectBudget, $projectOverflow, $projectTotal);

If you look at the var_dump output, you'll see that the comments of the different variables are wrong - because you've called number_format, the variables now hold strings, "1.00", "2.00", and "1,234.00".

So now when you compare those variables, you're comparing strings, which will look at which one comes first in alphabetical order - clearly not what you intended.

The fix is simple: don't format numbers until you're actually presenting them to a user.