Re: <?= and <%= both work, why not <?php=

This might not matter too much now, but conforming to XML standards might matter eventually. Let's say in a year or two, somebody decides to write a PHP module for an XML/XSL processor. (Something like XSP using Apache's Cocoon.) Basically, these processors take in some XML, look for processing instructions, create some output based on what they find, pass the output through an XSL transformation and spit out some other format, like HTML. If PHP doesn't work well with XML, this is going to be a mess. (I seem to remember hearing about such a module for Cocoon, which they call producers. It would be kind of cool to have a PHP procuder, which I'd prefer over the standard Cocoon producer, Java.) J p.s. and OT -- it would be pretty cool if the XSLT extension for PHP was able to process the XML/XSL before it passed it off to the actual XSLT processor, i.e. look through the XML or XSL for PHP processing instructions encased in <?php ... ?> and actually evaluate them before the transformation. That might be something cool to look into. (I use the XSLT extension quite a bit, and this would definitely be useful. For now, I eval() the XML/XSL and buffer it before sending it to the XSLT processor.) Gabriel Ricard wrote: > Why are short tags (<? ?> and <% %>) such a bad thing? > > Why does the PHP formatting (tags) matter in terms of SGML & XML? > > > Not that it matters, but personally I prefer to use the short tags <? > and ?> because it's less code for me to write, it fits nicely into my > HTML, and I find <?= much easier to read than <?php echo. I honestly > don't really care for <?php= , although I do understand the reasoning > behind it and agree with the consistency argument for it. > > - Gabriel