Are there any best practices for handling mathematical operations in PHP to ensure natural number results?

When performing mathematical operations in PHP, it's important to handle data types properly to ensure natural number results. One way to achieve this is by explicitly casting variables to integers before performing calculations. This can help prevent unexpected results such as float values or rounding errors.

$num1 = 10;
$num2 = 5;

// Ensure natural number results by explicitly casting variables to integers
$result = (int) $num1 + (int) $num2;

echo $result; // Output: 15