single and double quotes behaving differently

[cumpstey]

I was under the impression that single and double quotes behaved identically. However I'm puzzled by the following situation, in which they give different results. I have retrieved some multiline text from a textarea in a submitted form, and am trying to split it into component lines using the following code. I'd like to use single quotes, as I've consistently used singles for php quotes and doubles for html quotes, but only the double quotes give the intended result here.

 

$array = explode('\n', $textarea); Print_r ($array);
$array = explode("\n", $textarea); Print_r ($array);

give:

Array ( \[0] => line1 line2 )

Array ( \[0] => line1 [1] => line2 )

respectively. (Had to put that backslash in as bracket-zero-bracket doesn't display correctly here!)

 

Could someone please explain the difference?

 

[wildteen88]

Single and double quotes are not the same. PHP treats double quotes differently.

 

In Double quotes you can use:

• escape characters (\n, \t, \r etc)
  
• variables

 

 

PHP will treat variables/escape characters within single quotes as normal text.

[cumpstey]

Thanks. Very useful to know.

[Ninjakreborn]

@ wildteen88 Very neat/clean explanation and directly to the point.  HE summed up what someone can put in 5 paragraphs into 3 sentensces, and a partial list.