On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 7:03 PM, Kris Craig <kris.cr...@gmail.com> 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
