[Resolved] [Resolved] a couple of quick questions

thorpe

hello, just moving from asp to php (finally) and im really enjoying it, just have a few quick questions.

if im writting an echo() to create a form, and wish the form elements to be surrounded by " double quotes, how should i go about writting the echo()

ive seen this method used;

echo '<input type="text" name="user">'

but had been unsure as the book im reading has all strings contained in double quotes like so;

echo "hello"

is there a prefered method?

another ?

in asp there is such things as sub procedures. much like functions but they dont return a value. i usually use these to add stuff like document headers and the like. is there such a thing in php, or can i just use functions to echo() stuff to the screen without having to return anything?

thats all for now, im sure i'll be back when i get some real questions. any help appreciated.

Roger_Ramjet

Best look here for a full explanation of the syntax http://uk2.php.net/echo.

Bookmark the manual if you haven't already and search there first.

jpmoriarty

if you put a backslash before your charachter, it 'escapes' it - which basically means that it ignores it.

So you can use double quotes quite happily thus:

echo "This text will appear normally<br>\n";
echo "This text contains \"speech\" in it too<br>\n";

I think also that enclosing an echo in double quotes means that it will 'parse' the text in the quotes:

$i = "Some string";
echo "1. This is double quoted, and outputs $i<br>\n";
echo '2. This is single quoted, and outputs $i<br>\n';

If you run that, then the first will have "Some string" instead of the $i outputted, but the second will just display $i.

If in the 1. you wanted it to say $i (and not 'Some string'), then again you could escape the $ sign by placing a \ in front of it:

echo "1. This is double quoted, and outputs \$i<br>\n";

Give them a whirl and you'll see what I mean.

As for subprocs, you can use functions for them (I think...)

function html_headers($title)
{
  $output = "";
  $output .= "<html>\n";
  $output .= "<head>\n";
  $output .=  "<title>$title</title>\n";
  // note that I just used $title because of the double quotes
  $output .=  "</head>\n";
  return $output;
}
echo html_headers("This is the title of the page!");

...but there's probably a better way of doing that too. Oh, and of course you'd want more in your html header (doc type etc) but that's just an example!