BEWARE: Addition, subtraction, and string concatenation have equal precedence!
<?
$x = 4;
echo "x minus one equals " . $x-1 . ", or so I hope";
?>
will print "-1, or so I hope"
(Concatenate the first string literal and the value of $x, then implicitly convert that to a number (zero) so you can subtract 1 from it, then concatenate the final string literal.)