PHP echo tag - A simple solution to common problem

Hi, what’s up? If you ever coded in PHP, you definitely had created a code as simple as this

<?php
    echo "Some more or less important info";
?>

It takes us as much as 3 lines - it’s not a lot but while writing my PHP course and consuming the docs I’ve encountered this

PHP includes a short echo tag <?= which is a short-hand to the more verbose <?php echo.

I thought - “Huh, let’s give it a try”. And it worked, so that’s why I write this article

A little bit of info

This short echo tag is in standard and is not a part of some library/framework. And by the way it’s not classified as short tag

So even if short_open_tag is disabled, this tag still works

But, let’s test it

Short echo tag in practice

So, syntax for this tag looks like this

<?= "Text to display" ?>

When I checked it - I wrote this

<?=  "Hello short echo tags" ?>

And it worked

(Don’t think about the size, I purposefully made this text bigger with browser scaling)

But, does it allow use to use multi-line echo? Can we do something like this?

<?=  
    "Hello short echo tags
    Hi"
?>

Yes, we can!

But maybe a variable?

<?php 
    $var = 5;
?>

<?=  
    $var
?>

It still works!

And last test - a function + variable

<?php 
    $var = "password";
?>

<?=  
    password_hash($var, PASSWORD_DEFAULT)
?>

No problem with that too

So, it successfully managed to pass all of the tests

Conclusion

When I discovered this tag, my first thought was to write article about it. And when I found time - that’s how this article was born

I hope you learned something new and useful, that this will help you with your work

Check out my other articles and series such as

• PHP 0 to Hero
• Coding DIY pt.2 - making private message system with PHP
• Quick guide for linux privileges

That’s it, see you in next articles