What is the best practice for incrementing a numerical value in PHP without inadvertently treating it as a string?

When incrementing a numerical value in PHP, it's important to ensure that PHP interprets it as a number and not as a string. To avoid this issue, you can use the increment operator ++ directly on the variable containing the numerical value. This will increment the value by 1 without converting it to a string.

// Incrementing a numerical value without treating it as a string
$number = 5;
$number++; // Increment the value by 1
echo $number; // Output: 6