like perl's print qq(); statement...

_0_05_

Does php have something similar to Perl’s print qq(); statement? Where you are able to print HTML as multiline text, and not have to worry about escaping all the “’s?

dannys

Yes, PHP using something called heredoc (It's buried in the manual - if I didn't use it everyday I wouldn't have believed it existed)

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php - scroll down to the heredoc section.

filch

As a new user to php I have been going through whatever documentation I have and right now I am studying how single and double quotes work or do not work within statements. One thing I am puzzled about though is the heredoc. Not that it is overly hard to understand but I am having trouble with it as follows. Simply put, It does not seem to recognize newline or carridge returns even though the documentation makes it seem like you do not even have to use and newline escape characters.
For example I have a simple script as follows:

<?php
$ramble = <<< end_of_ramble
So there I was
Trying to make sense of it
When at the end
Of a very long day
It made
Even less sense!

end_of_ramble;
echo $ramble;
?>

When I run the script all of the lines are run together in a single line. All of the documentation I have read seems to indicate that this should not be so. I even tried adding newline escape characters but the script simple ignored them and never even printed them out.

A simple but puzzling problem. Any help out there?

Cheers

filch

hand

<?php 
$ramble = <<< end_of_ramble 
So there I was 
Trying to make sense of it 
When at the end 
Of a very long day 
It made 
Even less sense! 

end_of_ramble; 

print nl2br($ramble); 
?>

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php

rrijnders

The solution given by "hand" is correct; here is the explaination you seek:

When you created your string using the heredoc, all of the carriage returns and newlines are preserved. They are actually placed into your variable. Even when you ECHO()d the variable, the carriage returns and newlines are also output. If you view source on your web page you will see that the text is output the way you specified with the heredoc.

The reason all the text is run together in your browser is due to the way browsers interpret the string. Carriage returns and newlines are interpreted by the browser as spaces, and multiple consecutive spaces are further interpreted by the browser as a single space. The rules of HTML state that if you want the browser to actually render a newline or linebreak, you must specify so with one of the HTML tags such as or .

That is why the nl2br() function is used; it changes all of the newline characters in your string to tags so the browser will render the text the way you intended.

filch

Ah ha! You know, I saw this function in several other instances and always said to myself ... "You know ... you should look that up and see what it is" Well now it is here to bite my you know what. Thank you gentlemen for clearing that up for me. Now where was the ointment ;-)

Cheers

filch

Just one other thing as a followup:

My confusion about the heredoc statement really came from my reading a book from O'Reilly called 'Programming PHP' by Rasmus Lerdorf & Kevion Tatroe. In their explaination of the heredoc usage, their example goes like this:

$clerihew = <<< End_of_quote
Sir Humphrey Davy
More
More
etc
etc
Of having discovered sodium
End_of_quote
echo $clerihew

Then in bold so as to make reference to the output of this heredoc they put:

Sire Humphrey Davy
More
More
etc
Of having discovered sodium

Nowehere at this point is there any reference to the nl2br() function. Kind of an oversight I would think. Or is it because they were not outputting to a browser?

filch

Juggy_

http://www.php.net/htmlspecialchars maybe?

hand

This will also do it 🙂

<?php
echo "<pre><b>"; // <---
$clerihew = <<< End_of_quote
Sir Humphrey Davy 
More 
More 
etc 
etc 
Of having discovered sodium 
End_of_quote;
echo $clerihew;
?>

The best is to ask Rasmus Lerdorf & Kevion Tatroe 😃

filch

So this is like the HTML tag for preformatted text then? I notice that when you look at the source code from the browser that with the nl2br function you see at the end of each line and with the <pre> you do not. So with <pre>, carridge peturns or line breaks are assumed?

Cheers

filch

hand

<pre> is a special html tag. All text between <pre> and </pre> is displayed with a antiproportional font like "courier new" and all carriage returns are displayed "correctly".

Outside of theses <pre> tag all carriage returns are ignored - this is hyper text markup language standard. Only or produces "line breaks".

(sorry for my poor english)

filch

So if you want to use something other than proportional fonts, you have to use the nl2br() function.

OK ... thanks everyone for you input.

Cheers

filch

hand

No, you can't see it in this way.
<pre> is a special form of displaying data (font and linefeed) within html

nl2br() .. meens NewLine To BR
 is html syntax to let browsers generate "line breaks"