Question

I need to work with some scripts, in which I found this:

$data = <<<DATA
MIN={$min}
INVOICE={$invoice}
AMOUNT={$sum}
EXP_TIME={$exp_date}
DESCR={$descr}
DATA;

Can someone provide more info around $somevar = <<<DATA… and echo <<<HTML… it seems hard to find useful info about this.

Answer 1

It´s a heredoc syntax:

Heredoc

A third way to delimit strings is the heredoc syntax: <<<. After this operator, an identifier is provided, then a newline. The string itself follows, and then the same identifier again to close the quotation.

The closing identifier must begin in the first column of the line. Also, the identifier must follow the same naming rules as any other label in PHP: it must contain only alphanumeric characters and underscores, and must start with a non-digit character or underscore.

You can read more about this in the php documentation
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.syntax.heredoc

More info:

Example:

<?php
$mystring = <<<EOT
This is some PHP text.
It is completely free
I can use "double quotes"
and 'single quotes',
plus $variables too, which will
be properly converted to their values,
you can even type EOT, as long as it
is not alone on a line, like this:
EOT;
?> 

There are several key things to note about heredoc, and the example above:

You can use anything you like; "EOT" is just an example

You need to use <<< before the delimiter to tell PHP you want to enter heredoc mode

Variable substitution is used in PHP, which means you do need to escape dollar symbols – if you do not, PHP will attempt variable replacement.

You can use your delimiter anywhere in the text, but not in the first column of a new line

At the end of the string, just type the delimiter with no spaces around it, followed by a semi-colon to end the statement

Without heredoc syntax, complicated string assignments can quickly become very messy. Heredoc is not used all that often in the wild – very often you will wish it were used more, because too many scripts you will come across have messy code as a result of not using heredoc!

http://www.tuxradar.com/practicalphp/2/6/3