Hi!
Actually, echo and print should send output to the browser as soon as they are called. They write directly to stdio.
I just made a quick test script with this code:
<?php
print "<body>";
print "1<br>\n";
sleep(1);
print "2<br>\n";
sleep(1);
print "3<br>\n";
sleep(1);
print "4<br>\n";
sleep(1);
print "</body>";
?>
But the page loads only after the whole script is parsed, which shouldn't actually happen. I think it all depends on the code and how the browser parses the document it receives.
When you develop your scripts, you have two alternatives:
1) develop with templates - everything will be sent to the browser only when done with
2) put <? ?> blocks into html - everything will be called as the page is being parsed, so it will look as if the script is faster.
In my opinion the first option is better, but you do lose speed.
You can only see if this is true when you write big scripts. If you follow point 2, your scripts should be faster... visually.
Hope it helped,
Stas
