echo()

One of the most commonly used functions in PHP is echo(), which is used to output one or more strings to the browser or command-line interface.

Syntax

echo string1, string2, ..., stringN;

The echo() function can accept one or more strings as arguments, separated by commas. The strings can be enclosed in double or single quotes.

Examples

This example will output the text “Hello, world!” to the screen.

echo "Hello World!";
echo "Hello", " ", "World", "!";

echo() can also be used to output variables:

$name = "John";
echo "My name is $name";

In the example above, the output will be “My name is John”. The concatenation operator (.) joins the string “My name is “ with the variable $name.

It is also possible to use echo() to output HTML code. For example:

echo '<h1>Welcome to my website!</h1>';

This will output a heading tag to the screen.

Note: HTML and PHP code can both be used within echo() statements.

One important thing to keep in mind when using echo() is that it does not return a value. In other words, the output of echo() cannot be assigned to a variable or used in an expression.

For example, the following code will not work:

$result = echo 'Hello, world!';

The output error will be something like this:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected token "echo" in /home/user/scripts/code.php on line 2

Instead, the value of the function or method should be returned first using the return keyword.

The following example shows how to use echo on a returned value:

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