On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 7:03 PM, Kris Craig <[email protected]> wrote:
> Certainly. I don't believe this is about "inclusion" any more than
> creating a function called "ech" as an alias for "echo" would be. The
> <?
> tag, as you all know, creates problems when working with XML. Furthermore,
> I've never understood the "it's easier to read" argument since I've
> found
> it to be exactly the opposite. The <? as opposed to <?php, at least for
> me, makes it more difficult to "at a glance" see where the PHP code begins
> (i.e. it's smaller and more ambiguous). Also, since many hosts disable it
> by default, getting apps/frameworks that use them working can be an added
> pain.
>
> On the other hand, considering how verbose many of our function names are,
> I've never understood why the extra 3 characters (or 2 now that it's <?=)
> is such a burden that we have to deal with all the above annoyances
> instead. Like I said, other than the fraction of a second it takes to type
> "php", I really don't see any value in this.
>
The tag <?= isn't a short version for <?php or <?. The <?= allows you to
echo output, so these two examples are equivalent:
<?php echo $var; ?>
<?= $var ?>
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.short-open-tag
Before 5.4, turning off short tags turned off the shorthand echo tag, too.
The value I referenced was regarding the echo form of the tag (<?=), the
form of the tag Lester was troubleshooting. With 5.4, this will no longer
be a concern, as the echo form will always be available.
Adam