Comments on: Use Ruby-style tags in PHP http://robrosenbaum.com/php/use-ruby-style-tags-in-php/ PHP, JavaScript, and Other Things Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:43:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Rob http://robrosenbaum.com/php/use-ruby-style-tags-in-php/comment-page-1/#comment-74 Rob Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:48:15 +0000 http://robrosenbaum.com/?p=6#comment-74 halfer- <p>My article concerned ASP-style tags, not PHP short tags; the two are often confused, even on the PHP dev forum. Short tags create a syntactic conflict with XML, and should be avoided for that reason. ASP-style tags have no such problems. I believe the confusion between the two is the reason so few people use ASP-style tags (that and their name.)</p> <p>You are correct that they are less portable, but that is itself due to their infrequent use. If they were the standard rather than the exception - and there is no reason they should not be - then every hosting company would enable them by default. It is for that reason that I recommend using them whenever feasible.</p> halfer-

My article concerned ASP-style tags, not PHP short tags; the two are often confused, even on the PHP dev forum. Short tags create a syntactic conflict with XML, and should be avoided for that reason. ASP-style tags have no such problems. I believe the confusion between the two is the reason so few people use ASP-style tags (that and their name.)

You are correct that they are less portable, but that is itself due to their infrequent use. If they were the standard rather than the exception – and there is no reason they should not be – then every hosting company would enable them by default. It is for that reason that I recommend using them whenever feasible.

]]> By: halfer http://robrosenbaum.com/php/use-ruby-style-tags-in-php/comment-page-1/#comment-72 halfer Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:02:24 +0000 http://robrosenbaum.com/?p=6#comment-72 You can indeed use the short tags in PHP. However they're not enabled on every server, which is why the symfony team don't recommend this approach for code that is intended to be portable (eg if you're writing a plugin, or an application you intend to distribute). This can cause problems for users who don't have this kind of control over their htaccess file (some shared hosts can disable it). There's nothing wrong with short tags though - if the programmer understands their limitations but wants cleaner code, they should use them. You can indeed use the short tags in PHP. However they’re not enabled on every server, which is why the symfony team don’t recommend this approach for code that is intended to be portable (eg if you’re writing a plugin, or an application you intend to distribute). This can cause problems for users who don’t have this kind of control over their htaccess file (some shared hosts can disable it).

There’s nothing wrong with short tags though – if the programmer understands their limitations but wants cleaner code, they should use them.

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