php if-statement based on integers is not displaying results?

I'm using the following preg_match:

preg_match( '!<div class="thumblock ">(.*)</div>!si' , wp_gdsr_render_article_thumbs(0, false, "", 0, "", false) , $n );
$thumbs_string = strip_tags( $n[1] );

To extract the number between the span tags:

<div class="thumblock ">
<span class="rating-result">
<div id="gdsr_thumb_text_12_a" class="gdt-size-20 voted inactive gdthumbtext">+1</div>
</span>
<div class="ratingtext ">
<div class="raterclear"></div>
</div>

(in the example above, result is a string: "+1")

So I tried converting it into an integer with this:

$thumbs_number = (int)$thumbs_string;

which is used in this function:

function get_rating_class($thumbs_number) {
    if ($thumbs_number < 0) return ' bad';
    if ($thumbs_number < 2) return ' average';
    if ($开发者_Python百科thumbs_number < 4) return ' good';
    return ' excellent';
}

function rating_class($thumbs_number) {
    echo get_rating_class($thumbs_number);
}

to output a div class:

<div class="topic-like-count<?php rating_class($thumbs_number); ?>">

I even did var_dump():

<h2><?php var_dump($thumbs_string); ?></h2>
<h2><?php var_dump($thumbs_number); ?></h2>

and the results were:

string(2) "+1" and int(1) respectively (I directly copy/pasted them here).

But no div class is being output.

Any suggestion to fix this?

EDIT:

The class is indeed being output in the HTML source, but it isn't having any effect (and my stylesheet is not being cached). I have another version of the function which doesn't add an extra div around the span tags, and that one works but unfortunately I need that div.

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If the class name is being displayed in the HTML then the PHP code is fine. The stylesheet is likely the problem.

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Sure.. add an echo before the call to rating_class($thumbs_number);:

<div class="topic-like-count<?php echo rating_class($thumbs_number); ?>">

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Why are you using an extra function that's only used to echo? The following should work just fine.

<div class="topic-like-count<?=get_rating_class($thumbs_number);?>">