[SOLVED] echo or print

[Dirty-Rockstar]

Hi, im new. was referred by a friend.

 

anyway

 

My friend uses echo ' ';

 

i use print " ";

 

Is there a difference? or coder preference

[SirChick]

i tend to use print when i wana print html to act as html or other codes... and then use echo to just show variables / strings etc

[MadTechie]

There is a difference between the two, but speed-wise it should be

irrelevant which one you use.  print() behaves like a function in that

you can do:  $ret = print "Hello World";And $ret will be 1That means

that print can be used as part of a more complex expression where echo

cannot.  print is also part of the precedence table which it needs to

be if it is to be used within a complex expression. It is just about at

the bottom of the precendence list though.  Only "," AND, OR and XOR

are lower.echo is marginally faster since it doesn't set a return value

if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty.If the grammar is:

echo expression [, expression[, expression] ... ]Then echo (

expression, expression ) is not valid.  ( expression ) reduces to just

an expression so this would be valid: echo ("howdy"),("partner");but

you would simply write this as: echo "howdy","partner"; if you wanted

to use two expression.  Putting the brackets in there serves no purpose

since there is no operator precendence issue with a single expression

like that.

[Dirty-Rockstar]

i understand, but for simple db queries and updates using print or echo to display the information does it really matter?

 

i was taught on print, and to avoid echo all the times for what im coding anyway, which is not too complaicated. just queries, updates and inserts into 1 db then displaying that information based on certain variables and results

 

here is an example of a snippit of code from a forum i made

 

 

$ID=$_GET[iD];

$user1="SELECT * FROM {$db_prefix}question where id='$ID'";
$user2=mysql_query($user1) or die(mysql_error());
$user3=mysql_fetch_array($user2);

print "Choose the Topic you want to move this thread to<br>
Topic is:<br />
$user3[topic]<br />";

 

 

i ended print but in the code it continues. could i use echo to get the same result?

 

[Daniel0]

@MadTechie:

Good job copying from this page: http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/view.phtml/aid/1/fid/40

which is linked to from http://php.net/print

 

could i use echo to get the same result?

Yes.

[d22552000]

good practice would be this:

 

echo 'Choose the Topic you want to move this thread to<br>Topic is:<br />'.$user3[topic].'<br />';

 

You don't have to use echo, but look at my formatting.

[Daniel0]

good practice would be this:

 

echo 'Choose the Topic you want to move this thread to<br>Topic is:<br />'.$user3[topic].'<br />';

 

You don't have to use echo, but look at my formatting.

 

No it isn't... you are using a constant as the array index. It will work because PHP makes it a string with the value of the constants name if it isn't set. It gives you an E_NOTICE. Do $user3['topic'] instead.

[Dirty-Rockstar]

wow, you people must eat php for breakfast. I just started learning and 2 posts in here just made me scratch my head. interesting opinions on print/echo and code formatting tho.

[Daniel0]

wow, you people must eat php for breakfast. I just started learning and 2 posts in here just made me scratch my head. interesting opinions on print/echo and code formatting tho.

 

What I posted before wasn't an opinion What d22552000 did was incorrect. See: http://php.net/types.array#language.types.array.foo-bar

[d22552000]

I never use arrays, and would NOT have this problem.  I was stating that variables should be seperated from plain text.