PHP 5 echo and print Statements

In PHP there are two basic ways to get output: echo and print.

In this tutorial we use echo (and print) in almost every example. So, this chapter contains a little more info about those two output statements.

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PHP echo and print Statements

There are some differences between echo and print:

• echo - can output one or more strings
• print - can only output one string, and returns always 1

Tip: echo is marginally faster compared to print as echo does not return any value.

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The PHP echo Statement

echo is a language construct, and can be used with or without parentheses: echo or echo().
Display Strings
The following example shows how to display different strings with the echo command (also notice that the strings can contain HTML markup):

Example

<?php
echo "<h2>PHP is fun!</h2>";
echo "Hello world!<br>";
echo "I'm about to learn PHP!<br>";
echo "This", " string", " was", " made", " with multiple parameters.";
?>

Display Variables
The following example shows how to display strings and variables with the echo command:

Example

<?php
$txt1="Learn PHP";
$txt2="W3Schools.com";
$cars=array("Volvo","BMW","Toyota");

echo $txt1;
echo "<br>";
echo "Study PHP at $txt2";
echo "My car is a {$cars[0]}";
?>

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The PHP print Statement

print is also a language construct, and can be used with or without parentheses: print or print().
Display Strings
The following example shows how to display different strings with the print command (also notice that the strings can contain HTML markup):

Example

<?php
print "<h2>PHP is fun!</h2>";
print "Hello world!<br>";
print "I'm about to learn PHP!";
?>

Display Variables
The following example shows how to display strings and variables with the print command:

Example

<?php
$txt1="Learn PHP";
$txt2="W3Schools.com";
$cars=array("Volvo","BMW","Toyota");

print $txt1;
print "<br>";
print "Study PHP at $txt2";
print "My car is a {$cars[0]}";
?>