Question

Possible Duplicate:
How are echo and print different in PHP?

UPDATE :

I found to my relief an exact duplicate (it wasn’t showing up when I typed this question at first, I found it with … google):
Please vote with me to close this question, because it’s tiring, go hunt that other poor guy a bit 😉

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Is there any difference between print and echo in PHP? If so, which should I use and when? If not, why are there two keywords?

UPDATE :

At the downvoters : please read the SO faq. SO was setup also to capture googleable questions. so you shouldn’t downvote for that, this question is a valid question, answered on a lot of places and now on SO too.

Of course you can downvote for another reason, but please leave a comment in the lines of
-1 : downvoted for .. , cause for now, I’m not understanding the downvotes.

Answer 1

From this link, suggested by the PHP manual entry for the echo() function:

1. Speed. There is a difference between the two, but speed-wise it
   should be irrelevant which one you
   use. echo is marginally faster since
   it doesn’t set a return value if you
   really want to get down to the nitty
   gritty.

2. Expression. print() behaves like a function in that you can do: $ret =
   print “Hello World”; And $ret will be

3. That means that print can be used as part of a more complex expression
   where echo cannot. An example from
   the PHP Manual:

   $b ? print “true” : print “false”;

print is also part of the precedence
table which it needs to be if it is
to be used within a complex
expression. It is just about at the
bottom of the precedence list though.
Only “,” AND, OR and XOR are lower.

3. Parameter(s). The grammar is: echo expression [, expression[, expression]
   … ] But echo ( expression,
   expression ) is not valid. This would
   be valid: echo (“howdy”),(“partner”);
   the same as: echo “howdy”,”partner”;
   (Putting the brackets in that simple
   example serves no purpose since there
   is no operator precedence issue with a
   single term like that.)

So, echo without parentheses can take
multiple parameters, which get
concatenated:

echo “and a “, 1, 2, 3; //
comma-separated without parentheses
echo (“and a 123”); // just one
parameter with parentheses

print() can only take one parameter:

print (“and a 123”); print “and
a 123”;