This is called 'heredoc syntax' and has the advantage that you don't need to struggle with stuff like escaping and so on.
You can use variables inside the heredoc block (always enclose variables inside strings or heredoc blocks with curly braces. You don't need to do that in all cases but depending on the variables names it might or might not work without curly braces)
Example:
This works:
<?PHP
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$txt_test = "test";
$str =<<<EOSTR
Test test {$txt_test}_test something
EOSTR;
echo $str;
?>
This prints a warning because PHP tries to use a variable named $txt_test_test without the curly braces:
<?PHP
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$txt_test = "test";
$str =<<<EOSTR
Test test $txt_test_test something
EOSTR;
echo $str;
?>
The heredoc section in the manual isn't easy to find. It's just a paragraph in the strings section.
Thomas
