PHP 5 echo and print Statements

In PHP there are two basic ways to get output: echo and print.

In this tutorial we use echo (and print) in almost every example. So, this chapter contains a little more info about those two output statements.

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PHP echo and print Statements

echo and print are more or less the same. They are both used to output data to the screen.

The differences are small: echo has no return value while print has a return value of 1 so it can be used in expressions. echo can take multiple parameters (although such usage is rare) while print can take one argument. echo is marginally faster than print.

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The PHP echo Statement

The echo statement can be used with or without parentheses: echo or echo().

Display Text

The following example shows how to output text with the echo command (notice that the text can contain HTML markup):

Example

<?php
echo "<h2>PHP is Fun!</h2>";
echo "Hello world!<br>";
echo "I'm about to learn PHP!<br>";
echo "This ", "string ", "was ", "made ", "with multiple parameters.";
?>

Display Variables

The following example shows how to output text and variables with the echo statement:

Example

<?php
$txt1 = "Learn PHP";
$txt2 = "W3Schools.com";
$x = 5;
$y = 4;

echo "<h2>" . $txt1 . "</h2>";
echo "Study PHP at " . $txt2 . "<br>";
echo $x + $y;
?>

The PHP print Statement

The print statement can be used with or without parentheses: print or print().

Display Text

The following example shows how to output text with the print command (notice that the text can contain HTML markup):

Example

<?php
print "<h2>PHP is Fun!</h2>";
print "Hello world!<br>";
print "I'm about to learn PHP!";
?>

Display Variables

The following example shows how to output text and variables with the print statement:

Example

<?php
$txt1 = "Learn PHP";
$txt2 = "W3Schools.com";
$x = 5;
$y = 4;

print "<h2>" . $txt1 . "</h2>";
print "Study PHP at " . $txt2 . "<br>";
print $x + $y;
?>

Credit: www.w3schools.com