title: How to subtract more than 1 month in PHP variable having only month part?
body: <p>I am in little trouble.</p>
  
  <p>I am two variable for current month and previous month:</p>
  
  <p>I only want month part</p>
  
  <p>so this what I have written:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$current_month = date('F');
  $previous_month = date('F', strtotime($current_month.' -1 F'));
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>when doing echo it prints :</p>
  
  <p><code>May April</code></p>
  
  <p>Now this works perfectly for 1 month.</p>
  
  <p>But when I change the value of <code>-1</code> to something else say <code>-3</code>, it always has <code>May</code> as the value.</p>
  
  <p>it prints <code>May - May</code></p>
  
  <p>I have checked it with <code>-3 months</code> but it doesn't work.</p>
  
  <p>Also I have seen in docs how to subtract months from date, but they involve whole date object, I only need months.</p>