Bug #76414 [Com]: return echo("foo"); ought to work as expected

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76414&edit=1 ID: 76414 Comment by: spam2 at rhsoft dot net Reported by: aleemb at gmail dot com Summary: return echo("foo"); ought to work as expected Status: Not a bug Type: Bug Package: *General Issues Operating System: OSX PHP Version: 7.2.6 Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: echo is *not* a function - it's a language costruct echo $a, "\n", $b, "\n"; this would not be possible with a function and the difference is that is saves a ton of concat calls compared to echo $a. "\n" . $b . "\n" which does exactly the same but becaus eof the repeatet concat a ton of in-memory-copies a triggered which can be expensive depending on the string sizes Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-06-05 11:16:16] aleemb at gmail dot com @requinix, is there any reason echo can't be tweaked to behave in the same manner? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-06-05 10:32:39] requinix@php.net Use print(). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-06-05 10:30:22] aleemb at gmail dot com Description: ------------ This is either a bug or a feature request, either way the following should work as expected: return echo("foo"); It should echo "foo" and return. Test script: --------------- return echo("foo"); Expected result: ---------------- foo Actual result: -------------- PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'echo' (T_ECHO), expecting ';' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76414&edit=1