When you echo out the variables in HTML, you are jumping back into PHP and then back out so there's nothing to be gained (or lost) by doing this:
Bob ate <? print "$apple_count"; ?> apples.
Instead of this:
print "Bob ate $apple_count apples.";
But to answer a different question, this:
$result = "Bob ate " . $apple_count . " apples<br>";
$result .= "Bob ate " . $orange_count . " oranges<br>";
$result .= "Bob ate " . $cherry_count . " cherries<br>";
echo $result;
might be more (or less) efficient than this:
Bob ate <? print "$apple_count"; ?> apples<br>
Bob ate <? print "$orange_count"; ?> oranges<br>
Bob ate <? print "$cherry_count"; ?> cherries<br>
I'd find it hard to believe that you'll gain or lose even a half of a percent efficiency. But it wouldn't be too hard to test. (Measure the execution time in microtime on a very large sample of code).
