PHP string doesn't allow < and> characters

Question

I have a string in my code as per the following example:

\';
?>

Answer 1

With PHP you can generate HTML markup, so you have to find a way to distinguish between HTML element characters ( < & > ). There exist special sequence of characters in HTML that are called HTML entities. Those are described with an ampersand, some sort of shorthand and end with a semi-colon.

Here are some examples:

>     : > (greater-than)
<     : < (less-than)
&    : & (ampersand)
»  : » (right angle quote marks)
é : é (e acute)

Almost all characters can be represented with such entities, but it quickly gets tedious. You only have to remember the < and > ones, plus the & for URLs.

Your code should be rewritten like this if your intention was to show the less-than / greater-than signs.

As mentioned in other answers, you can use the function htmlspecialchars() to convert characters in a variable (e.g. from user input).

will display blah blah for viewing in a web browser. Else, if you were using PHP on the command line for example, you would not need to use this function.