SonarQube: Message displayed in PHP code

Question

I have this statement:

return ++$maxContratNum;

SonarQube display this message:

Extract this increment or decrement operator into a dedicated statement

what's meaning this message ??

Thank you

Answer 1

The message is trying to tell you to write like this:

++$maxContratNum;
return $maxContratNum;

Written this way, it's perfectly clear that the value of $maxContratNum is incremented, and the function returns that incremented value.

If you write return ++$maxContratNum;, that may be confusing to some readers.