echo "string" or ?>string<?php

[Anon]

I read somewhere, that the guy that created PHP (sorry, don't know his name, but respect!), said that instead of

echo "some string here..."

you should use:

?>some string here<?php

However, I thought maybe switching back and forth between php and html mode would be a lot more expensive than just echoing something.

Anyway, I went along with it for years, so my big longs strings are full of <?php echo $row['somevar']; ?> statements.

Well, I've started learning ASP (no, don't shout!), and I came accross an article at coveryourasp.com saying you should just echo it all out!

I'm sure ASP and PHP are quite similar, so which should I use? 😃

[Anon]

if ive got 300 lines of html passed to me by a designer... im not going to want to go though it echoing it... pesonally I would think in most situations
?>string<?PHP
is more effective then string is very long... of course this saves you server the hastle of having to process each character of "string"

[Anon]

But what if I have:

<TR>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
<TD><?php echo $somvar; ?></TD>
</TR>

Which is what I seem to end up with a lot. Would it be more efficient to do an echo?

[Anon]

ok... in that scenario you would be better with
<?PHP
echo"<TR>\n";
echo"<TD>$somvar</TD>\n";
echo"<TD>$somvar</TD>\n";
echo"<TD>$somvar</TD>\n";
echo"<TD>$somvar</TD>\n";
echo"<TD>$somvar</TD>\n";
echo"<TD>$somvar</TD>\n";
echo"</TR>\n";
?>

[Anon]

Ah... Silly me...