Echo, PHP Statement, Print, Concat and Comments in PHP

• echo
  • Echo/Print Variable in PHP
    • Example 1:
    • Example 2:
    • Example 3:
    • Example 4: echo()
• print & Difference between echo and print
• comment
  • 1. Inline commenting - // Comment
  • 2. Multi-line commenting - /* Comment */
• PHP Statement

In Previous chapter, we’ve learned about variable and it’s data types. Today, we’ll learn also some important thing in PHP programming language.

1. echo
2. print &
3. commenting in PHP code

¶echo

In PHP, to output something to display/console/browser, we can use echo or print. So, echo is used to print / output something in browser.

Let’s we want to show Welcome to learn PHP, so that’s simple -

<?php
  echo "Welcome to learn PHP";
?>

Output:

¶Echo/Print Variable in PHP

¶Example 1:

Suppose, we’ve a $price variable and it’s value is 10 and we want to print that price -

<?php
  $price = 10;
  echo $price;
?>

Output:

¶Example 2:

Suppose, we’ve a $name variable and it’s value is Jhon and we want to print that name with Hello Jhon -

<?php
  $name = "Jhon";
  echo "Hello " . $name;
?>

Output:

Note: In the above example, we’ve added a dot (.) sign after "Hello " string. This is called Concat or adding in the aspect of PHP programming language.

In our, next examples, we’ll use this echo and concat a lot for our every example.

¶Example 3:

Suppose, we’ve two variables $number1 and $number2 and we want to print the summation after keeping those in a $summation variable -

<?php
  $number1 = 10;
  $number2 = 20;
  $summation = $number1 + $number2;
  echo "Summation = " . $summation;
?>

Output:

Wow, great, we’ve made a simple summation calculator using this kind of PHP knowledge. So, we can print - text, variable, concat two strings or variables and many more.

¶Example 4: echo()

We can also use echo() instead of echo. But echo is preferred.

<?php
  $number1 = 10;
  $number2 = 20;
  $summation = $number1 + $number2;
  echo ("Summation = " . $summation);
?>

Output:

Run PHP Code Online

¶print & Difference between echo and print

print and echo are almost same. print is also used for output in PHP programming. Only difference between them is -

1. echo has no return value
2. print has a return value of 1

So, what we’ve done using echo, we can do that using print. Let’s do the first example with print -

<?php
  print "Welcome to learn PHP";
?>

Output:

And rest of the examples are also valid for print in PHP.

¶comment

In our HTML class, we seen how to comment in HTML. That is like -

<!-- HTML Comment & it'll not be visible in Browser -->

In PHP, there is also a commenting system in Code. There are some approach for commenting in PHP -

1. Inline commenting - // Comment after this Hash sign. Use // sign and after that add our comment.
2. Multiline commenting - /* Comment inside here */

¶1. Inline commenting - // Comment

Let’s add a comment in our first example of what it’ll do -

<?php
  print "Welcome to learn PHP"; // This will print Welcome to learn PHP
?>

¶2. Multi-line commenting - /* Comment */

<?php
  $number1 = 10; // Assign number1 to 10
  $number2 = 20; // Assign number2 to 20
  
  /*
  * Let's make summation of those two number.
  * By adding those two number.
  * Summation = number 1 + number 2;
  */
  
  $summation = $number1 + $number2;
  echo ("Summation = " . $summation);
?>

Output:

¶PHP Statement

I think, you’ve already looked, we use semicolon ; after every line in our above examples. In PHP, to terminate any statement, we use semicolon - ;. So, after any print or echo we must have to use semicolon as, the statement finishes after an echo or print.

<?php
  $number1 = 10;
  $number2 = 20;
  $summation = $number1 + $number2;
  echo "Number1 = " . $number1 . "<br>";
  echo "Number2 = " . $number2. "<br>";
  echo "Summation = " . $summation;
?>

Output: