Which is better - alternating quotes or double quotes w/ escapes?

[bunner_bob]

As I understand it, there are two ways to put html inside PHP. Use all double quotes and escape the quotes around the html values, or use single quotes around the html and unescaped double quotes around the html values.

Option 1:

"<a href=\"page.html?id=3\"><img src=\"image.gif\"></a>"

Option 2:

'<a href="page.html?id=3"><img src="image.gif"></a>'

Option 2 is a lot easier to read. Also it makes it a lot easier to switch a chunk of code from being actual html to being php-echoed html, and vice versa. Are there any drawbacks to doing it this way?

Thanks!

• Bob

[devinemke]

Option 2 is faster. you should always single quotes whenever possible since PHP does not need to look for variable expansion. what i do usually is use the "." concatenation operator with variables.

this will execute faster:

echo 'this string has a ' . $variable . ' in the middle';

this would be (slightly) slower:

echo "this string has a $variable in the middle";

also since most people use double quotes in HTML using single quotes in PHP to echo it requires less escape characters

[artic]

Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't be faster by doing this

?>html<?php