[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”PHP Syntax”][vc_column_text]The PHP parsing engine needs a way to differentiate PHP code from other elements in the page. The mechanism for doing so is known as ‘escaping to PHP’. There are four ways to do this −[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Canonical PHP tags”][vc_column_text]The most universally effective PHP tag style is −
<?php
...
?>
If you use this style, you can be positive that your tags will always be correctly interpreted.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Short-open (SGML-style) tags”][vc_column_text]Short or short-open tags look like this −
<?
...
?>
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Short tags are, as one might expect, the shortest option You must do one of two things to enable PHP to recognize the tags −
- Choose the –enable-short-tags configuration option when you’re building PHP.
- Set the short_open_tag setting in your php.ini file to on. This option must be disabled to parse XML with PHP because the same syntax is used for XML tags.
[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”ASP-style tags
“][vc_column_text]ASP-style tags mimic the tags used by Active Server Pages to delineate code blocks. ASP-style tags look like this −
<% ... %>
To use ASP-style tags, you will need to set the configuration option in your php.ini file.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]