NYCPHP Meetup

NYPHP.org

[nycphp-talk] single quote vs. double quote

Anirudh Zala arzala at gmail.com
Wed Apr 4 23:40:50 EDT 2007


On Thursday 05 April 2007 01:16, Kenneth Dombrowski wrote:
> On 07-04-04 09:29 +0530, Anirudh Zala wrote:
> > On Tuesday 03 April 2007 19:00, tedd wrote:
> > > At 8:51 AM -0400 4/3/07, Ken Robinson wrote:
> > > >At 08:43 AM 4/3/2007, tedd wrote:
> > > >>I'm not sure if what you are saying includes this, but I use double
> > > >>quotes all the time in php for producing html. For example:
> > > >>
> > > >>[1] echo("$myResult <br/>");
> > > >>[2] echo('<a href="mydomain.com/mywidget.php" >$myResult</a>');
> > > >>
> > > >>The use of double quotes in [1] allows me to print something
> > > >>without having to use the dot operator.
> >
> > It is matter of preference and convenience. As I said when you use double
> > quotes to enclose expression, PHP will try to look for "constants" that
> > will match part of static string. If constant is not found then will use
> > string as it is but if found then will replace that part of string by
> > matching constant's value.
> >
> > In your above example, if there is defined a constant as "href" (though
> > not likely to exist) then it's value will be replaced in final output.
> > That is why "" should not be used there.
>
> This is incorrect.  Strings are never evaluated for constants.
> Double-quoted strings are evaluated for "$variableExpansion" , which
> incurs a slight processing cost
>
> Unquoted strings are first evaluated as constants, and if not found, an
> E_NOTICE is issued, and the unquoted string is treated as a string
> literal (as if it were surrounded by single quotes)
>
> kenneth at gilgamesh:/tmp$ php -r 'define("XYZ", "hi there"); echo "XYZ\n";
> echo XYZ . "\n";' XYZ
> hi there

Thanks for correcting my belief. Looks like I had misconception about this 
issue. :)

>
> except for that detail, I agree with Anirudh's advice to not use "" except
> for the few places you need it ("\n", etc)
>
> Kenneth
>
> _______________________________________________
> New York PHP Community Talk Mailing List
> http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>
> NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online
> http://www.nyphpcon.com
>
> Show Your Participation in New York PHP
> http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php

Anirudh Zala



More information about the talk mailing list