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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-07T19:52:10+00:00

I was wondering whether: $foo = <<< EOT Hello, World! EOT; is just as

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I was wondering whether:

$foo = <<< EOT
Hello, World!
EOT;

is just as valid as

$foo = <<<EOT
Hello, World!
EOT;

and in particular whether this is true in all versions of PHP (or just the latest ones).

I wonder because I want to know whether a space between the <<< and first EOT identifier is syntactically valid. For instance, my PHP interpreter 5.3.10 runs this correctly but
my vim text editor does not syntax-highlight the heredoc in the same way if there is a
space between <<< and EOT (the EOT identifier is colored white instead of purple).

So what is the deal here? Are both legal in all versions of PHP or not?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    No, you should not provide a space between the <<< and the identifier. As specified in the PHP documentation:

    (…) 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.

    Source: http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.syntax.heredoc

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