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by: ZacharySchuessler
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The Internet for webmasters just wouldn't be the same without the language of PHP. PHP has given webmasters a long-lasting relationship with their websites, to manipulate it to best offer customers and Internet users what they need. But before becoming the master PHP expert, learning smaller details is important. And interestingly enough, many PHP developers don't know the difference between Echo and Print.

Everyone in the PHP web development community is familiar with Echo and Print- two commands to output data to the screen. But what they may not know is that the two have the same output and similar structure- so why two commands for the same task?

The two language constructs Print and Echo differ because Echo does not return a value- although Print does. This is an odd thing to have, however, since a command used to output data to the screen will almost never need to return a value. In fact, even those who have been in the programming industry for years have probably never seen a good use of Print where Echo couldn't follow.

While performance may be a big issue for PHP developers and their clients, the debate between Print and Echo is actually fairly meaningless. It is true that Print will take more system resources to use, but it is such a minimalistic amount that developers are recommended to choose the construct of their choice, regardless of speed issues.

So far the industry standard has been to use Echo, but it should be stressed that either command may be used at will. Echo seems to be the favorite as it is easier to type, not to mention it's a fun word to say! Those who favor the Print command are usually older programmers, who are accustomed to using the command Print from other programming languages that are now considered archaic.

As a last note of worthiness, it should be made clear that if speed is an issue, more emphasis should be put on how the two commands are used. Repeatedly using either command where a programmer could simply concatenate a string or value together will waste system performance- and on a much more noticeable scale that the difference between returning a value or not. Thus, this subject should be addressed if anything in regards to speed.

Final Thoughts

Echo and Print will continue to confuse new developers that are learning PHP- this will never change. But as time wears on, it is more likely that the emphasis is going to be put on Echo. Already, there is a large emphasis place on using Echo simply because instructional resources do so. While Print may not be phased out, it will always be in the background for those who remember the "good old days" when the Print command was all a programmer had.

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Learn more on Echo Commands and Good Resource For PHP.

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