note 114555 deleted from control-structures.alternative-syntax by salathe

Note Submitter: josh at qaribou dot com ---- The reason temec987's approach of using boolean operators as an alternative to control structures won't work for an 'echo' is because the result of evaluating the expression will always be a boolean. Other languages (e.g. ruby) are much better suited to this approach, as the expression evaluated will be the resultant value, e.g.: 5 && 4 In ruby, this would be 4, but in PHP, this would be true (type-juggled equivalent is 1), which isn't useful for anything but further binary logic. You can still use logical operators as conditionals, but only for executing logic, not for getting a value back, e.g.: <?php defined('USER_CAN_EXECUTE') or die('Access denied.'); ?> is a nice one to use for access control, or say you want to put in a quick check that your object has all the data loaded it needs to call a webservice (functions are just examples): <?php $this->readyForService() and $this->postData('http://endpoint.com'); ?> What you can't use them for is something like this: <?php echo (strlen($mystring) > 5) and $mystring; ?> instead, you'd use ternaries for that: <?php echo (strlen($mystring) > 5) ? $mystring : null; ?>