how to break a line like <br> in php

scuzzo

hi, I made this stupid php thing, and the output comes out on one line. And was wondering how to break a line, to have a space, and then the next text on the next line.

the output is
the amount of food items we have are 15the date is July 16 2003

and I want, below

the amount of food items we have are 15

the date is July 16 2003

this is what i have so far lol, newbie here

<?php
$date='July 16 2003';
$pies='5';
$apples='10';
$total=$pies + $apples;

echo 'the amount of food items we have are ';
echo $total;
echo 'the date is '; echo $date; 

?>

sarahk

The php just outputs text to the browser which reads it. As the browser is expecting html then you should use <br>.

catgurl_ashley

NewLine = \n
Tab = \t

that what your looking for?

Mucello

If you want the html to actually have a <br> tag, then you could do something like this:

<?php
$date='July 16 2003';
$pies='5';
$apples='10';
$total=$pies + $apples;

echo 'the amount of food items we have are ';
echo $total."<br><br>";
echo 'the date is '.$date; 

?>

If you also want it to have a new line when viewing the source code after the page has loaded, try this:

<?php
$date='July 16 2003';
$pies='5';
$apples='10';
$total=$pies + $apples;

echo 'the amount of food items we have are ';
echo $total."<br><br>\n\n";
echo 'the date is '.$date; 

?>

Also notice I changed the last line of your code to remove the redundant echo's and instead used the concatenator.

scuzzo

i love this forum, thanks everyone for the help

What does the period right after $total mean?

echo $total."<br><br>";

clandestine555

it's a concatenator, basically allows you to break out of a string and push an echo without having to put in several lines of code, example:

<?php

echo "Hello, ". $yourname ." i am from the planet ". $planet .".";

// otherwise, you'd have to do:

echo "Hello, ";
echo $yourname;
echo "i am from the planet ";
echo $planet;
echo ".";

?>
see how much simpler it makes it?

scuzzo

thanks that makes stuff more simple

edwardsbc

And for you speed freaks, this is faster:

echo $total,'<br><br>';

The comma prevents a string concatenation subroutine from being called (remember [man]echo[/man] can handle multiple arguements), and the singe quotes tell php to NOT parse the string for embeded variables. Normally the speed difference isn't noticable until within a loop that does this hundreds of times...

Skull

in all the scripts that I have wrote I would always just do

echo "Hello, $yourname i am from the planet $planet.";

does doing it like I just did make any difference to the way the script works, or is just yet another way of typing something out 😕

MoldRat

Its basically the same.
It is better to use multiple lines for debugging, though.

$word = 'meow';
echo 'Cat says $word';
//outputs Cat says $word
echo "Cat says $word";
//outputs Cat says meow

_>

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Skull
in all the scripts that I have wrote I would always just do

echo "Hello, $yourname i am from the planet $planet.";

does doing it like I just did make any difference to the way the script works, or is just yet another way of typing something out 😕

Not really; it gets confusing when the variables are non-trivial (like $x['link'][$i]->relative[2]) because it becomes less clear where the variable name actually ends, and if you've got a really busy site the fact that it's a few dozen nanoseconds per eval slower might gall.
But that's about it.

feldon23

Which is why I use

echo "This is fun $x['link'][$i]}.<br>\n";