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.
PHP echo and print Statements
echo
and print
are more or less the same. They are both used to output data
to the screen.
The differences are small: echo
has no return value while print
has a return value of 1 so it can be used in
expressions. echo can take multiple parameters (although such usage is rare)
while print
can take one argument. echo
is marginally
faster than print
.
The PHP echo Statement
The echo
statement can be used with or without parentheses:
echo or echo().
Display Text
The following example shows how to output text with the echo
command (notice that the text 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.";
?>
Run example »
Display Variables
The following example shows how to output text and variables with the echo
statement:
Example
<?php
$txt1 = "Learn PHP";
$txt2 = "W3Schools.com";
$x = 5;
$y = 4;
echo "<h2>" . $txt1 . "</h2>";
echo "Study PHP at
" . $txt2 . "<br>";
echo $x + $y;
?>
Run example »
The PHP print Statement
The print
statement can be used with or without
parentheses:
print or print().
Display Text
The following example shows how to output text with the print
command (notice that the text can contain HTML markup):
Example
<?php
print "<h2>PHP is Fun!</h2>";
print "Hello world!<br>";
print "I'm about to learn PHP!";
?>
Run example »
Display Variables
The following example shows how to output text and variables with the
print
statement:
Example
<?php
$txt1 = "Learn PHP";
$txt2 = "W3Schools.com";
$x = 5;
$y = 4;
print "<h2>" . $txt1 . "</h2>";
print "Study PHP at " . $txt2 . "<br>";
print $x + $y;
?>
Run example »