Few other web development languages have done as much for web developers as PHP has. And in learning all the complexities of the language, web developers will be able to better become higher paid, more satisfied, and better prepared to make the next best web application. But taking baby steps in getting there is important: and the finer things such as knowing the difference between Echo and Print become clear.

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?

Print is actually something more of a function, as it can be enclosed in brackets. Echo lacks this ability, but then again, there is almost never a need to do so. In reality, having this ability is something that even those who have seen it all in PHP likely won’t need to make use of. This just adds more confusion to the topic than what was previously apparent.

Speed is a major concern in web applications. This holds true with the Print and Echo commands since it is logical to think that Print would cost more in resources to operate. This logic is actually true, although the differences in performance are so small that it isn’t even worth choosing one construct over the other solely based on performance.

When a PHP developer looks around at examples and scripts from others in the community, they will see that Echo is used much more often. This isn’t because of speed, as previously discussed, but because many think it easier to type and the keyword command is more appealing in design. The success of Echo has been compounded after many publishers make books and online resources that sport the term.

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

PHP development just wouldn’t be the same without fun debates such as the one just mentioned. But in reality, it really doesn’t matter which route is taken- so long as either language construct is used in a performance-based manner. Although Print may still have somewhat of a following today, as books and publishers start using Echo more often, it’s likely we’ll see a death to the Print command soon enough.

Learn more about Echo Versus Print and Echo Vs Print.