How to print multiple lines

ukndoit

Hello. I'm a Perl programmer, and am trying to learn PHP now.
In Perl to print mulitple lines I can do this:

print qq~Hello "$nickname", how are you?

I am fine, please let me know if I can help you.

Ok I will, Bye, "$admin"~;

I don't have to put echo ahead of it, do I have to with PHP?
How can I print mulitple lines, starting with something other then a " or a ', so I don't have to escape everyone I use.

In Perl, I used ~ because I did not normally ever use ~ in my text, so I would have very few things to HAVE to escape.

Please let me know, if PHP has a variable of print ~ or something like that.

UPDATE: Sorry, In Perl I do not have to put " around variables, I did that so you could see I did not have to escape the "'s, like I would if I did: print "

rpanning

I believe this is it, I'm still learning PHP. If you just want to echo it out just try replacing $var = with echo. Dono if it works, can't test it right now.

<?php
$var = <<< EOV
Hello $nickname, how are you? 

I am fine, please let me know if I can help you. 

Ok I will, Bye, $admin
EOV;
?>

edwardsbc

I think you are looking for the "here document" syntax of [man]echo[/man] or [man]print[/man].

echo <<<ENDMARKER
These mupltiple lines
will be outputed as written.
And variables, $var, are ok too.
ENDMARKER;

ukndoit

Thanks!

Can I also store big chunks of data the same way, like this:

<?php
$string = <<<HTML
a huge text file, or a small one, but lots of lines...
Is this possible?
HTML;
?>

Will $string now contain all that data?

UPDATE, when I do what you said:

<?php
echo <<<SOMETHINGHERE
hello $name you owe us $10.00
SOMETHINGHERE;
?>

Do I have to escape $10.00 since it's inside an echo statement and not a variable?

edwardsbc

Yes you can use the same method to fill variables, as you have shown.

You do not need to escape the dollar sign because 10.00 is not a valid variable name, so php decides it isn't a variable. You don't need to escape single or double quotes either. However, you do need to use curly brackets on array elements:

$a = array('f'=>'joe', 'l'=>'blow');
$v = <<<ENDMARKER
\nThis is another "big" stringy thing
with a 'amount' $10.00. {$a['f']} {$a['l']}
ENDMARKER;
echo $v;