print and echo..

[kidestranged]

Is there a difference between print and echo? I've always used echo but I see people using print more and more.
Just curious.
Mark

[cordex]

Just ran a quick test. Despite what I've heard in the past about print() being slightly faster, I've found there is little difference at all.

Outputting 224,000,000 characters with no variable parsing took 55.438518 seconds using print() and 50.698919 using echo.
I would guess the difference is due to server load.

When I added variable parsing (in-line string), it nearly doubled the time necessary to run with both print and echo statements.

Hardly scientific, but proof enough to me. Use what you like but be consistant.

-Ben

[Anon]

echo doesn't need parentheses around its argument(s) (it's not a function) - and if it has more than one argument (unlike print(), it can take more) it _mustn't have parentheses. It's also equivalent to the '=' in the <?=$variable?> HTML-escaping idiom.

print() is a function and does need the parentheses.

print() also returns its argument, so you can say $output=print('This is a string I just printed out.');, but why being able to do that might be necessary is anyone's guess.

So yeah, like Ben says, do whatever turns you on. I always use echo myself, but that's just a habit.