RE: [PHP] here document

Thanks very much to all for the great info shared. Torben, that's a perfect example. It is DEFINITELY a PITA to output form variables with all these <?PHP echo $something;?> all over the place. The fact that the here doc option also lets you use the variables allows for some easily/quickly coded html that has the occasional variable in it... all the best, Jack Dempsey -----Original Message----- From: Lars Torben Wilson [mailto:torben@pinc.com] Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2000 12:42 AM To: Dean Hall Cc: Jack Dempsey; php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] here document Dean Hall writes: > > anything like perl's > > print<<EOF > > blah blah blah > > EOF > > > > ? > > There's no need for here documentation in PHP. PHP is embedded in HTML, not > the other way around. To do something like that, you'd do: This is only true for simple scripts. For instance, I've got several thousand lines of backend code with no HTML *anywhere*. Despite the fact that PHP was originally designed to be easily embeddable in HTML, for extensive, modular, and maintainable code bases, it is not desirable to do so. > <? > // some PHP > ?> > blah blah blah > <? > some more PHP > ?> > > Dean. Well, it was added nearly a year ago for two reasons: 1) ease (subjective) of complex output, and 2) to get people to stop asking for it every 5 minutes. :) For instance, the following is IMHO a PITA to type in: ?> <table> <tr> <td><?php echo $name ?></td> <td><?php echo $email ?></td> </tr> </table> <?php Whereas this feels a lot easier: echo <<<EOT <table> <tr> <td>$name</td> <td>$email</td> </tr> </table> EOT; Plus, it allows to to assign the whole chunk to a variable, which you can't do with the ?><?php method. Sure, it's an overly simplified and contrived example. But it *can* be a useful function which extends beyond the mere status of syntactic sugar. YMMV. -- +----------------------------------------------------------------+ |Torben Wilson <torben@php.net> Netmill iTech| |http://www.coastnet.com/~torben http://www.netmill.fi| |Ph: 1 250 383-9735 torben@netmill.fi| +----------------------------------------------------------------+