Mixing html and php variables inside an echo statement

Question

This may be a problem of my trouble with using single and double quotes in one statement. But I have this piece of code:

echo \'

      

        

Answer 1

PHP differentiates between single and double quoted strings as being different things. Single quoted strings are literals, you want them output as is. Double quoted strings are to be interpreted (scanned) for any PHP variables and the appropriate replacements made.

This is simply a feature (and a useful one) of the language. I would actually recommend that you get used to using double quotes for strings in all languages. There is no language where it is unacceptable and in staticly typed languages (C, C++, Java, ...) single quotes indicate a character while double quotes indicate a string. That is, String foo = 'my string'; would error in Java as would char * foo = 'my string'; in C or C++. However, char foo = 'a'; is valid, as is String foo = "my string";

Only if you need to eke out the last nanoseconds of performance from PHP might you go through and convert double quoted strings to single quoted strings. In other languages it doesn't matter. Afaik, PHP is the only language that make this string specific double vs. single quotes distinction.