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@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #Yes, "@" means to suppress error-reporting for that expression. It can be useful to suppress "ugly" error message on your page when things don't work as expected, but then it becomes incumbent on you to check return values nad such and write your own, more graceful error-handlers when those expressions fail. Otherwise, your page may simply output nothing or else some erroneous output without any indication that something went wrong in the code.
For instance:
@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #
It's called the "heredoc" method of writing literal string values.
It is begun by "<<<" followed by a string of characters and a newline. It means, treat everything that follows as one string until you see the string after the "<<<" starting a line by itself and followed by a ";". It allows variable interpolation as if it were a double-quoted string. The letters "EOD" is just an acronym I inherited from somwhere or other for "End Of Data", but you could use "pointfiftyae" if you wanted to:
One nice thing about it is that line breaks you type in the source code within a heredoc string will be output as newlines - you con't have to mess with n characters.@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #
Oh, and another nice thing is you can use both double and single quotes within the string without worrying about having to escape them with back-slashes:
@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #For my personal coding style, I dislike using lots of <?php ?> tags and going in and out of PHP mode. I find that more confusing - but maybe that's just me. For extended chunks of pure HTML text (where "chunk" is some arbitrary number of lines that I choose at the moment ? ), then I'll switch back out of PHP mode, but I don't like to do it for just a few lines, and I find throwing in a [b]<?php echo $variable ?>[/b] within the middle of a chunk of plain HTML text disjointed-feeling.
But it's a personal taste thing, I guess. I just find it easier to read - and therefore debug - when I don't keep hopping back and forth between HTML and PHP.
Spelling matters…
In another thread,
[QUOTE=ShrineDesigns][code=php]@fwrite(…) (…) @fclose(…)
what are the “@” signs for ? is it a better way to write php ? or are you just placing this sign here for the fun of it ? 😮
And, another question if I may, is it better to use single quotes ($_POST[‘foo’]) or double quotes ($
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@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #Yes, "@" means to suppress error-reporting for that expression. It can be useful to suppress "ugly" error message on your page when things don't work as expected, but then it becomes incumbent on you to check return values nad such and write your own, more graceful error-handlers when those expressions fail. Otherwise, your page may simply output nothing or else some erroneous output without any indication that something went wrong in the code.For instance:
[code=php]
<?php
$handle = @fopen("file.txt", "w")
if($handle)
{
$result = @fwrite($handle, $text_to_write_to_file);
if(! $result)
echo <<<EOD
<p class="error">There was an error attempting to save your data to a file.
Please contact the <a href="mailto:[email protected]">webmaster</a>
if you continue to have this problem.</p>
EOD;
}
}
else
{
echo <<<EOD
<p class="error">There was an error attempting to create a file for your data.
Please contact the <a href="mailto:[email protected]">webmaster</a>
if you continue to have this problem.</p>
EOD;
}
?>
[/code]0
@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #Personally, I always found these messages highly useful fo debugging...
If ever you've got a split second to sacrifice for me, what is this "EOD" thing ? I am not sure I understand it fully, it seems to take place of <?php and ?> ... :o[/QUOTE]
It's called the "heredoc" method of writing literal string values.
It is begun by "<<<" followed by a string of characters and a newline. It means, treat everything that follows as one string until you see the string after the "<<<" starting a line by itself and followed by a ";". It allows variable interpolation as if it were a double-quoted string. The letters "EOD" is just an acronym I inherited from somwhere or other for "End Of Data", but you could use "pointfiftyae" if you wanted to:
[code=php]
echo <<<pointfiftyae
<p>This is a test.
It is only a test.</p>
pointfiftyae;
[/code]One nice thing about it is that line breaks you type in the source code within a heredoc string will be output as newlines - you con't have to mess with n characters.
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@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #Wow. Impressive. Thank you ! ?[/QUOTE]
Oh, and another nice thing is you can use both double and single quotes within the string without worrying about having to escape them with back-slashes:
[code=php]
$longString = <<<EOD
<p>This is a "test."
'It is only a test,' he said.
The result was: '$result'.
EOD;
echo $longString;
[/code]0
@NogDogAug 06.2005 — #For my personal coding style, I dislike using lots of <?php ?> tags and going in and out of PHP mode. I find that more confusing - but maybe that's just me. For extended chunks of pure HTML text (where "chunk" is some arbitrary number of lines that I choose at the moment ? ), then I'll switch back out of PHP mode, but I don't like to do it for just a few lines, and I find throwing in a [b]<?php echo $variable ?>[/b] within the middle of a chunk of plain HTML text disjointed-feeling.But it's a personal taste thing, I guess. I just find it easier to read - and therefore debug - when I don't keep hopping back and forth between HTML and PHP.