--- title: Elvis (?:) vs Null Coalescing (??) in PHP: A Practical... description: A practical breakdown of PHP's Elvis operator (?:) and Null Coalescing operator (??) for WordPress developers. The ?? operator only falls back when a variable... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/elvis-vs-null-coalescing-in-php-a-practical-guide-for-wordpress-developers-kblhrujok twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Elvis (?:) vs Null Coalescing (??) in PHP: A Practical Guide for WordPress Developers | daily.dev og:description: A practical breakdown of PHP's Elvis operator (?:) and Null Coalescing operator (??) for WordPress developers. The ?? operator only falls back when a variable... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/elvis-vs-null-coalescing-in-php-a-practical-guide-for-wordpress-developers-kblhrujok og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/kbLhrUJoK.png og:image:alt: Elvis (?:) vs Null Coalescing (??) in PHP: A Practical Guide for WordPress Developers og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Elvis (?:) vs Null Coalescing (??) in PHP: A Practical Guide for WordPress Developers **[DEV](https://daily.dev/sources/devto)** · 4 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A practical breakdown of PHP's Elvis operator (?:) and Null Coalescing operator (??) for WordPress developers. The ?? operator only falls back when a variable is undefined or null, making it ideal for array access and request data where 0 or empty string may be valid. The ?: operator falls back on any falsy value (false, 0, "", null), making it better suited for WordPress options and database-driven settings where empty or false values should trigger a default. Choosing the wrong operator can introduce subtle bugs, especially with functions like get_option() that may return false or empty strings. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Handling Null and Undefined with ‘??’](https://daily.dev/posts/handling-null-and-undefined-with--vopbeffru) · JavaScript in Plain English · 26 upvotes · 1 comments - [\[Pre-RFC\] Null coalescing associative array elements](https://daily.dev/posts/pre-rfc-null-coalescing-associative-array-elements-anxd1lgxi) · externals.io · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Twig 3.23: Introducing new operators and destructuring support \(Symfony Blog\)](https://daily.dev/posts/twig-3-23-introducing-new-operators-and-destructuring-support-symfony-blog--bk2cqn0wr) · Symfony · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#webdev](https://daily.dev/tags/webdev), [#php](https://daily.dev/tags/php), [#wordpress](https://daily.dev/tags/wordpress) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/elvis-vs-null-coalescing-in-php-a-practical-guide-for-wordpress-developers-kblhrujok) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Elvis (?:) vs Null Coalescing (??) in PHP: A Practical Guide for WordPress Developers","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/elvis-vs-null-coalescing-in-php-a-practical-guide-for-wordpress-developers-kblhrujok","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/elvis-vs-null-coalescing-in-php-a-practical-guide-for-wordpress-developers-kblhrujok"},"datePublished":"2026-03-11T23:15:14.628Z","dateModified":"2026-03-11T23:15:36.304Z","description":"A practical breakdown of PHP's Elvis operator (?:) and Null Coalescing operator (??) for WordPress developers. The ?? operator only falls back when a variable...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d6489653e3b1cf3330092c286b85bf0e?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d6489653e3b1cf3330092c286b85bf0e?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"DEV","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"DEV","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/devto","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/devto"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/elvis-vs-null-coalescing-in-php-a-practical-guide-for-wordpress-developers-kblhrujok","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"webdev,php,wordpress","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"DEV","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/devto"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Elvis (?:) vs Null Coalescing (??) in PHP: A Practical Guide for WordPress Developers"}]} ```