Quick Question

[nootkan]

Larry in the book on page 59 where it states:

 

4. Print out the user information:

 

print "<p>Thank you, $title $name, for your comments.</p><p>You stated that you found this example to be '$response' and added:<br />$comments</p>";

 

There are no single quotes in the first two variables ($title $name) and last variable ($comments).  Is that by design or a typeO?  I noticed that it works either way but wanted to know if that is okay to do or should they all have the single quotes?  Just a little confusing for me.

[Larry]

It just a matter of whether you want to print single quotes or not. It'd be odd to display a person's name and title within quotes. 

[nootkan]

I thought all variables had to have either single or double quotes.  I must be not understanding something.  I'll go back and read again.

[Antonio Conte]

Quote types work a little bit different. If you want a variable to work inside quotes, you eighter needs to use double quotes or use concatination.

 

$var = "HERE";

echo "You can echo out '{$var}' using double quotes"; // You can echo out 'HERE' using double quotes

echo 'But you can't echo $var using single-quites'; // But you can't echo $var using single quotes

echo 'Unless you concatinate. Then ' . $var . ' will work'; // Unless you concatinate. Then HERE will work.

 

The reason why $response is wrapped in single-quotes in your example is that he wanted to display the single quotes in the output itself. The {}-tags are only a precaution on my side, btw. They explicitly states it's a variable.

[nootkan]

Oh I see so it's not actually a variable value unless it is in brackets and variables can be used by themselves without quotes unless the output requires them.  Thanks for your help.

[Larry]

Yes -> "variables can be used by themselves without quotes unless the output requires them".

No -> "it's not actually a variable value unless it is in brackets"

 

As Antonio said in his post, those brackets weren't necessary. A variable is a variable if it's a variable. If you want to use the variable's value within a string, you must use double quotes. That's the main thing to grasp.