Question

I have something like this in one of my views

<li <?php $isCurrent ? echo 'class="current"' : ''?> >
    <a href="SOME_LINK" class="SOME_CLASS">SOME_TEXT</a>
</li>

This causes a syntax error, unexpected T_ECHO. Changing echo for print solves the issue, but I would like to understand why I cannot use echo.

Answer 1

You can’t use this construct that way. The ternary operator is not an “if” block, but returns a value based on whether the condition is fulfilled or not.

You want to change the structure:

<?php echo  ($isCurrent ? 'class="current"' : '') ?>

it works with print() because that is a function with a return value. It is however not what you want, because the first echo will print out the result of print which makes no sense.

It doesn’t work with echo because echo is not a function, but a language construct.