print, echo & printf

[Anon]

I am a recent convert to PHP and the books I have read seem to use 'echo', 'print' and 'printf' for pretty much the same things by different authors. Are they the same, or is there any reason why I should use one over the other. I have found that 'printf' is a bit clumbersome and is less obvious when error checking.

Any thoughts? (I have been playing around with PHP3, but looking at PHP4 books if that makes any difference).

Thanks,

Marco.

[Anon]

echo can take any number of arguments.

echo "foo", $foo, "bar", $bar;

print seems to want only one argument, although you can use the concatenation operator to get around that.

print "foo" . $foo . "bar" . $bar;

printf() is entirely different; it is a versatile tool (based on the C function of the same name) for formatting data on output. You shouldn't use it unless you actually need the formatting capabilities. It takes more CPU time than the simpler print and echo. It is harder to read the code, and you are more likely to make mistakes. See the manual page for sprintf() for details on how to use the formatting options.

[Anon]

I would tend to disagree here, I am sure I am going to see a few posts against this thought but here goes.. I like printf() because for me it much easier to troubleshoot and you don't have to worry about concatenation or escaping quotes, furthermore all of your variables(arguments) sit right at the end of the line in plain site. And I don't really think it is that big of a deal to use it vs echo or print from a performance stand point. It is basically a prefernece, and those who disagree are arguing a minute point anyway.

[Anon]

escaping quotes

How can printf() allow you to do this? Surely you don't mean you
write stuff like this, do you?

&nbsp;&nbsp;printf("<a href=%spage.php%s>Link to page<a>", '"', '"');

[Anon]

Certianly noy, but printf/sprintf can take the form of either s/printf(''); or s/printf(""); If I am doing regular html I use printf(''); For example:
printf('<a href="%s?var1=%s">click here</a>', $PHP_SELF, $var1);
or if I am creating an sql statement I can use
sprintf("SELECT * from table where field = '%s'", $var1);

IN my opinion this makes cleaner code and it is easier to debug, and if notice Kirk I didn't have to escape any quotes or do any concatenation.

[pharcyde]

what about escaping underscores and % in printf() with dynamic data (ie you don\'t know if the string will contain any). To write all those escape chars would be a pain in the ass. While I think printf() is easier to debug, printing in general is easy to debug....use echo and save yourself some time and processing power.