[RESOLVED] formatting question

io1313

Hi - I'm really new to php and had a question on formatting. In going through this book I reading on it I notice that things are separated by lines and by tabs. I can see where this would help keep things straight. The only thing that bugs me is that you see a { then next line ; next line } to me this looks like the { and } are open and close statements. Is it a big deal to move them closer to what they are around. I know that sounds stupid, but have come from a strong HTML and one other (now dead) language, that just clarifies it for me. So if I do that will it make it unreadable to any certain type of server?

Thanks for your patience.

dagon

the formatting is for human readability not the machine, you can format php so its all on a single line if you like, but just try maintaining that!

Your free to do it how you like just think others may also work on your code one day so following some sort of recognised standard is a good idea.

my ide adds the tabs and formatting for me, makes my life easier.

io1313

That answered my question. There is very little I would change in the formatting if anything at all. It's just something I was wondering about, especially when getting errors, it's a good thing to know that it's in your code and not if your missing a tab or something. It's also something you can't ask a book.

Thanks again

bradgrafelman

Note that there are rare cases where formatting can be the cause of your problems. The two cases I can think of would be heredoc and nowdoc syntax.

For example, this code has a parse error:

<?php

if($foo == true) {
    echo <<<END_OF_HTML
    <p>This isn't going to parse correctly!</p>
    END_OF_HTML;
}

?>

whereas this would be the solution:

<?php

if($foo == true) {
    echo <<<END_OF_HTML
    <p>This isn't going to cause any parse errors.</p>
END_OF_HTML;
}

?>

dagon

i use heredoc for outputting js some times, it makes my code look messy, i wish they didn't make it format dependent. But thanks for the correction bradgrafelman,