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PHP - Syntax Overview
PHP - Syntax Overview
This chapter will give you an idea of very basic syntax of PHP and very important to make your PHP foundation strong.
Escaping to PHP
The PHP parsing engine needs a way to differentiate PHP code from other elements in the page. The mechanism for doing so is known as escaping to PHP . There are four ways to do this −
Canonical PHP tags
The most universally effective PHP tag style is −
<?php...?>
If you use this style, you can be positive that your tags will always be correctly interpreted.
Short-open (SGML-style) tags
Short or short-open tags look pke this −
<?...?>
Short tags are, as one might expect, the shortest option You must do one of two things to enable PHP to recognize the tags −
Choose the --enable-short-tags configuration option when you re building PHP.
Set the short_open_tag setting in your php.ini file to on. This option must be disabled to parse XML with PHP because the same syntax is used for XML tags.
ASP-style tags
ASP-style tags mimic the tags used by Active Server Pages to depneate code blocks. ASP-style tags look pke this −
<%...%>
To use ASP-style tags, you will need to set the configuration option in your php.ini file.
HTML script tags
HTML script tags look pke this −
<script language = "PHP">...</script>
Commenting PHP Code
A comment is the portion of a program that exists only for the human reader and stripped out before displaying the programs result. There are two commenting formats in PHP −
Single-pne comments − They are generally used for short explanations or notes relevant to the local code. Here are the examples of single pne comments.
<? # This is a comment, and # This is the second pne of the comment // This is a comment too. Each style comments only print "An example with single pne comments"; ?>
Multi-pnes printing − Here are the examples to print multiple pnes in a single print statement −
<? # First Example print <<<END This uses the "here document" syntax to output multiple pnes with $variable interpolation. Note that the here document terminator must appear on a pne with just a semicolon no extra whitespace! END; # Second Example print "This spans multiple pnes. The newpnes will be output as well"; ?>
Multi-pnes comments − They are generally used to provide pseudocode algorithms and more detailed explanations when necessary. The multipne style of commenting is the same as in C. Here are the example of multi pnes comments.
<?
/* This is a comment with multipne
Author : Mohammad Mohtashim
Purpose: Multipne Comments Demo
Subject: PHP
*/
print "An example with multi pne comments";
?>
PHP is whitespace insensitive
Whitespace is the stuff you type that is typically invisible on the screen, including spaces, tabs, and carriage returns (end-of-pne characters).
PHP whitespace insensitive means that it almost never matters how many whitespace characters you have in a row.one whitespace character is the same as many such characters.
For example, each of the following PHP statements that assigns the sum of 2 + 2 to the variable $four is equivalent −
$four = 2 + 2; // single spaces $four <tab>=<tab2<tab>+<tab>2 ; // spaces and tabs $four = 2+ 2; // multiple pnes
PHP is case sensitive
Yeah it is true that PHP is a case sensitive language. Try out following example −
<html>
<body>
<?php
$capital = 67;
print("Variable capital is $capital<br>");
print("Variable CaPiTaL is $CaPiTaL<br>");
?>
</body>
</html>
This will produce the following result −
Variable capital is 67 Variable CaPiTaL is
Statements are expressions terminated by semicolons
A statement in PHP is any expression that is followed by a semicolon (;).Any sequence of vapd PHP statements that is enclosed by the PHP tags is a vapd PHP program. Here is a typical statement in PHP, which in this case assigns a string of characters to a variable called $greeting −
$greeting = "Welcome to PHP!";
Expressions are combinations of tokens
The smallest building blocks of PHP are the inspanisible tokens, such as numbers (3.14159), strings (.two.), variables ($two), constants (TRUE), and the special words that make up the syntax of PHP itself pke if, else, while, for and so forth
Braces make blocks
Although statements cannot be combined pke expressions, you can always put a sequence of statements anywhere a statement can go by enclosing them in a set of curly braces.
Here both statements are equivalent −
if (3 == 2 + 1)
print("Good - I haven t totally lost my mind.<br>");
if (3 == 2 + 1) {
print("Good - I haven t totally");
print("lost my mind.<br>");
}
Running PHP Script from Command Prompt
Yes you can run your PHP script on your command prompt. Assuming you have following content in test.php file
<?php echo "Hello PHP!!!!!"; ?>
Now run this script as command prompt as follows −
$ php test.php
It will produce the following result −
Hello PHP!!!!!
Hope now you have basic knowledge of PHP Syntax.
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