Usage of 'die' in PHP

[GeertVc]

Hi,

When using databases in PHP, is there a difference between the following two statements:

[FONT=courier new]$cats = mysql_query( 'SELECT ID, Name FROM Categories' ) or
die( '<p>Error retrieving Categories from database!<br />'
. 'Error: '
. mysql_error(). '</p>'
);
[/font]

and

[font=courier new]$cats = mysql_query( 'SELECT ID, Name FROM Categories' );

if ( !$cats )
{
die( '<p>Error retrieving Categories from database!<br />'
. 'Error: '
. mysql_error(). '</p>'
);
[/font]

If so, can someone point this out for me?

Rgds,

Geert

[weekender]

there's no functional difference (ie they both echo an error message and stop execution if the statement fails). There may be a very slight timing difference, but I doubt that too.

it's just a bit clearer and shorter to do

$cats = mysql_query( 'SELECT ID, Name FROM Categories' )
    or die( '<p>Error retrieving Categories from database!<br />');