There are two ways to get the output in PHP – echo, and print.
echo and print statements in PHP are somehow similar but have some differences as well. echo statement does not have a return value while print has a return value of 1. echo can have multiple parameters whereas print can have one parameter.
Note: echo statement works faster than print
Example of echo
In this example, we have used the echo statement to display two strings.
<?php
echo "Hello World <br />";
echo "Hello", "Everyone";
?>Output:
Hello World
Hello Everyone
Notice in the above example, that the HTML element <br /> contained in the string will be rendered as an HTML element. So there would be a line break after the string Hello World.
The echo statement can also display the value of a variable.
<?php
$num1 = 4;
echo $num1;
?>Output:
4
We can also concatenate a variable with a string. Concatenation in programming means interconnecting different types of values.
Example
<?php
$num1 = 4;
echo "The number is " . $num1;
?>Output:
The number is 4
Note: In PHP the dot operator(.) is used to concatenate two different data types.
The print statement
The print statement can be used with parenthesis or without it.
Example
<?php
print "Hello World <br />";
print("Hello Everyone");
?>Output:
Hello World
Hello Everyone
Just like the echo statement, the print statement can also be used to display the value of a variable.
Example
<?php
$num1 = 4;
$message = "The number is ";
print $message . $num1;
?>Output:
The number is 4