php concatenation operator dot or comma?

Question

my first post here.

I've been using php for few years, but not into it for the last couple of years.

I just started university and in a lecture yesterday there was en example looking like:

$b = "HTML";
$a = "test ", $b , "printing";
echo $a;

so the operator using to concatenate strings and variable is the comma , I've ALWAYS used the . dot. Never knew I could use the comma. I asked the lecturer and the answer was pretty vague.

Now I am researching on the manual and I found:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.string.php

is it possible to use the , ???

The comma only works in echos. – dan-lee Feb 19 '14 at 10:08 — dan-lee, Feb 19 '14 at 10:08
you should get syntax error in your example. – Awlad Liton Feb 19 '14 at 10:09 — Awlad Liton, Feb 19 '14 at 10:09
sorry for the duplicate, thanks for the answer! – jsab Feb 19 '14 at 10:10 — jsab, Feb 19 '14 at 10:10
Your code shouldn't work normally. – Mubo Feb 19 '14 at 10:11 — Mubo, Feb 19 '14 at 10:11

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 19 '14 at 10:11

0

It's . for Concatenation.

Your code should to be as,

$b = "HTML";
$a = "test" . $b . "printing";
echo $a;

Output :

testHTMLprinting

For whitespace, you should use

$b = "HTML";
$a = "test" . " " . $b . " " . "printing";
echo $a;

Output :

test HTML printing

answered Feb 19 '14 at 10:11

Yuva Raj

3,780
1
17
30

or `$a = "test {$b} printing";` :) – message Feb 19 '14 at 10:12
thanks.. I always used the . but is it right that we can use the , with echo? is there any official documentation? I cannot find on the php manual – jsab Feb 20 '14 at 11:50

php concatenation operator dot or comma?

1 Answers1