Should $found_posts be returned as string in ‘found_posts’ filter hook?

Almost all integers in WordPress are treated as strings.

If you try to var_dump($post->ID); inside a loop you notice also post id is a string.

Normally this is not a problem because of PHP auto type casting feature.

This can be a problem, when you do strict comparison, like 1 === $post->ID or in_array(1, $ids, true); but this never happen in core for integers (in core strict comparison is used only for some strings or to differe 0 from false).

Out of core (plugin, themes), is close to impossible (and close to crazy) that someone code something like:

$found_posts === "1"

so feel free to return integers as integers, (that is the right way) you’ll have no problems: the reason that core sometimes is bad, is not a reason to being bad too.

Just be aware that if you want to use strict comparison (that’s better) you have to manual type cast any WordPress integer:

(int) $found_posts === 1

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