Function not returning correct value for found_posts filter

Question

I am trying to return found_posts value minus the offset and I am not getting the expected pagination.

  function homepage_offset_pagination( $found_posts, $query ) {

    //Define our offset again...
    $offset = 3;

    //Ensure we're modifying the right query object...
    if( $query->is_home() ) {

        $found_posts = $found_posts - $offset;

    }

    return $found_posts;

  }
  add_filter( 'found_posts', 'homepage_offset_pagination', 10, 2 );

When the function tries to subtract $offset from $found_posts, I do not get the correct pagination, however if I echo the value out before returning I get the correct value.

Also, if I substitute $found_posts - $offset with an int literal I do get correct pagination.

I don't know what I am doing wrong.

I would appreciate any help, thanks.

EDIT Removed the is_paged condition because that was removing pagination in the admin panel. This works that same without the bug.

Answer 1

Ok, so I found out the found_posts filter runs 3 times on the homepage and the third echo within the innermost element says $found_posts equals to 38 which is accounting for an unpublished post. I only noticed the first echo that was printing 37 at the top of the page. So if I set the $offset to 4 in the filter it works fine. Not sure if this will produce errors later on, but this answers the initial question.