Print or Echo?

Hi!

I was wondering, what could I use best for printing text in PHP: Echo or Print?
And why should it be Echo or Print?
I heard that servers can process Print faster, is this true?

Thanks for sharing your opinions and knowledge!

Bram Wenting

 

echo is faster cause it doesn't leave a return value like print. But this is really nothing you should worry about.. use whatever you prefer.

 

Afaik echo is marginally faster as it does not return a value (true/false on success/failure) but there's really not much in it.

Also when outputting multiple variables and strings you don't need to concate into a single argument but can pass each variable as a separate parameter:
echo $var, $var2, $var3;
print $var.$var2.$var3

 

If I have to print a value(s) to a page i use print because I can usually format the line or variables that need to be printed.

ex.
print '<h3><center><b>' . $this->errmsg . '</h3></center></b><p><br>';

This way I can use html or php formatting to give a cleaner effect to the screen for viewers that go to my site.

 

I use print for an odd reason, namely that if I'd use echo I might get confused in perl

 

I would have to agree DXL plus I am use to using print from writing C++ code all the time. I only used echo when I first started programming.

 

I use echo...

 

You can find more information about print() and echo() functions on php.net/print.

 

There is a some difference between the two, but speed-wise it should be irrelevant which one you use. print() behaves like a function in that you can do:

$ret = print "Hello World";

and $ret will be 1.

That means that print can be used as part of a more complex expression where echo cannot. print is also part of the precedence table which it needs to be if it is to be used within a complex expression. It is just about at the bottom of the precedence list though. Only "," AND, OR and XOR are lower.

echo is marginally faster since it doesn't set a return value if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty.

If the grammar is:

echo expression [, expression[, expression] ... ]

then

echo ( expression, expression )

is not valid. ( expression ) reduces to just an expression so this would be valid:

echo ("howdy"),("partner");

but you would simply write this as:

echo "howdy","partner";

if you wanted to use two expressions. Putting the brackets in there serves no purpose since there is no operator precedence issue with a single expression like that.

Feel free to use any according to your needs. *NIX geeks will prefer "echo" though.