PHP 7.0.6 Released

    PHP tags

    When PHP parses a file, it looks for opening and closing tags, which are <?php and ?> which tell PHP to start and stop interpreting the code between them. Parsing in this manner allows PHP to be embedded in all sorts of different documents, as everything outside of a pair of opening and closing tags is ignored by the PHP parser.

    PHP also allows for short open tag <? (which is discouraged since it is only available if enabled using the short_open_tag php.ini configuration file directive, or if PHP was configured with the --enable-short-tags option).

    If a file is pure PHP code, it is preferable to omit the PHP closing tag at the end of the file. This prevents accidental whitespace or new lines being added after the PHP closing tag, which may cause unwanted effects because PHP will start output buffering when there is no intention from the programmer to send any output at that point in the script.

    <?php
    echo "Hello world";

    // ... more code

    echo "Last statement";

    // the script ends here with no PHP closing tag

    Changelog
    Version Description
    7.0.0 The ASP tags <%, %>, <%=, and the script tag <script language="php"> are removed from PHP.
    5.4.0 The tag <?= is always available regardless of the short_open_tag ini setting.

    User Contributed Notes

    crazytonyi at gmail dot com
    2 months ago
    Regarding earlier note by @purkrt :

    > I would like to stress out that the opening tag is "<?php[whitespace]", not just "<?php"

    This is absolutely correct, but the wording may confuse some developers less familiar with the extent of the term "[whitespace]".

    Whitespace, in this context, would be any character that generated vertical or horizontal space, including tabs ( \t ), newlines ( \n ), and carriage returns ( \r ), as well as a space character ( \s ). So reusing purkrt's example:

    <?php/*blah*/ echo "a"?>

    would not work, as mentioned, but :

    <?php /*php followed by space*/ echo "a"?>

    will work, as well as :

    <?php
    /*php followed by end-of-line*/ echo "a"?>

    and :

    <?php    /*php followed by tab*/ echo "a"?>

    I just wanted to clarify this to prevent anyone from misreading purkrt's note to mean that a the opening tag --even when being on its own line--required a space ( \s ) character. The following would work but is not at all necessary or how the earlier comment should be interpreted :

    <?php
    /*php followed by a space and end-of-line*/ echo "a"?>

    The end-of-line character is whitespace, so it is all that you would need.
    purkrt at gmail dot com
    1 year ago
    I would like to stress out that the opening tag is "<?php[whitespace]", not just "<?php". While this might seem blatantly obvious, I thought for some time that

    <?php/*blah*/ echo "a"?>

    would work, and it does not; the comment does not work as whitespace. I've run into this while converting some older code with short open tag.
    jcastromail at yahoo dot es
    3 months ago
    Its important:

    this code (for web)
        <pre>
        I
        <? echo "am;" ?>
        Groot
        </pre>

    Generates the next result:
        I
        amGroot
    instead of
        I
        am
        Groot
    The last tag "?>" deletes the end of the line.

    However, if we changed the line
        <? echo "am"; ?>
    by
        <? echo "am"; ?>.  (or  a space)
    then the result is :
        I
        am.
        Groot
    mario
    1 year ago
    A few related notes, partly covered elsewhere in the manual:

      → Since PHP 5.4 the inline echo <?= ?> short tags are always
        enabled regardless of the short_open_tag (php.ini) setting.

      → PHP tags are infrequently also referred to as open/close "tokens"
        (as per the tokenizers T_OPEN_TAG / _ECHO, and T_CLOSE_TAG naming).

      → The historic ASP-style <% %> and even more rarely used
        <script language=PHP></script> tags are to be repealed in PHP7.
        http://wiki.php.net/rfc/remove_alternative_php_tags

    There also exists a small tool called "phptags tidier" for consistently rewriting PHP short/long tags.  It's suitable to normalize include and template scripts, e.g. employ the always-enabled long <?php ?> tags, and/or relieve whitespace padding before/after PHP tags:

        phptags --long --whitespace --warn  *.php

    Instead of reliably fixing the common whitespace/BOM issues around tags, it can also just remove all ?> close tags with `--unclose --tokenizer` as advised afore.
    alexander dot podgorny at somewhere dot com
    1 year ago
    One reason to use long tags over short is to avoid confusion with <?xml ?> notation.
    preda dot vlad at yahoo dot com
    3 years ago
    So here are the valid ways to open PHP tags:

    <?php ?> // standard tags
    <? ?> // short tags, need short_open_tag enabled in php.ini
    <% %> // asp tags, need asp_tags enabled in php.ini
    <script language="php"> </script> // case insensitive

    PSR-1 coding standards suggest to only use <?php ?> or <?= ?> (echo short tags) - and no other variations, and PSR-2 suggests to not close the tags in PHP only files.
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