Categorizing non-ID categories PHP loop - php

Question

On my project there're various search results of different content-types. For unimportant reasons, not all content-types carry a unique ID. However, I tried to write this loop that will detect IDless content-types, and will give them a unique ID.
Basically, the results look like this:
Category ID 3
Category ID 3
Category ID 4
NON-ID Category 1
NON-ID Category 2
[...]
I tried this:
$current = $result->section;
// if there's a category ID -- use it
if ($current != null) echo $result->sectionid;
else
// if this is the first IDless category -- initialize. this happens once.
if ($virginity == true) {
$store = $current;
$virginity = false;
}
// if initialized and current category string is the same as stored category string -- print it
if (($virginity == 0) && ($store = $current)) {
echo $defaultID;
}
// if initialized and current category string is different from the stored category string -- set new default category +1 and print it
if (($virginity == false) && ($store != $current)) {
$defaultID = $defaultID++;
echo $defaultID;
$store = $current;
}
Can you see where I'm going here?
Trying to give each new category that comes up in the search results a unique ID, on the next loop session - check if the category string is same as the previous one, if so -- use the same ID, else -- bump ID by 1, print the new ID and store a new category.
However: This doesn't work properly.
Why?

Answer 1

Your code is a little tough to read, but a big red flag I see is this block:
//You have a single equals sign here v
if (($virginity == 0) && ($store = $current))
{
echo $defaultID;
}
That means that as long as $virginity==0, that line will always be run, and $store will always equal $current.
By the way, I'm going to recommend some reformatting and readability suggestions. Take them or leave them , though, it's just my opinion.
$current = $result->section;
if ($current != null)
{//if one of the results has brackets, put brackets on both
echo $result->sectionid;
}
else if ($virginity == true)
{// if this is the first IDless category -- initialize. this happens once.
$store = $current;
$virginity = false;
}
//you're setting $virginity=false or true, so doing !$virginity makes sense
// if it was actually a number, then comparing to 0 is better
// also, use parentheses only where really needed, otherwise it's just clutter
if (!$virginity && $store == $current)
{
echo $defaultID;
}
if (!$virginity && $store != $current)
{// if initialized and current category string is different from the stored category string -- set new default category +1 and print it
$defaultID = $defaultID++;
echo $defaultID;
$store = $current;
}