Should I use php quote escapes for single quotes or use double quotes in arrays?

Question

I realized that I can have problems with single quotes in php arrays:

<?php
$lang = array(
    'tagline' => 'Let's start your project',
    "h1" => "About Me"
);
?>

So I changed it to double quotes:

<?php
$lang = array(
    "tagline" => "Let's start your project",
    "h1" => "About Me"
);
?>

Should I use "php quote escapes", instead of what I just did? (by the way how to write "php quote escapes"?)

Answer 1

First of all, some people will say that simple-quoted strings are faster that double-quoted strings ; you should not care about that kind of micro-optimization : it will not make any difference for your application.

The difference between simple-quoted and double-quoted strings is :

• with double-quoted strings, there is variable interpolations
• with double-quoted strings, you can use some special characters like \n, \t, ...
• with single-quoted strings, you have simple-quotes to escape.

For reference, in the PHP manual :

• Single quoted
• Double quoted

I would that that, in the general matter, it's mostly a matter of personnal preferences...

Personnaly, in a situation such as the one you described, I would use a double-quoted string, like you did : it make the code easier to both write and read, as you don't have to escape that quote.

Answer 2

Do whatever is most readable, assuming you don't need the double-quote special features. For me, that's using whichever quotes for the string that appear the least in the string.