Escaping from HTML

There are four ways of escaping from HTML and entering "PHP code mode":

Example 5-1. Ways of escaping from HTML 1  2 1. <? echo ("this is the simplest, an SGML processing instruction\n"); ?> 3  4 2. <?php echo("if you want to serve XML documents, do like this\n"); ?> 5  6 3. <script language="php"> 7  echo ("some editors (like FrontPage) don't 8  like processing instructions"); 9  </script> 10  11 4. <% echo ("You may optionally use ASP-style tags"); %> 12  <%= $variable; # This is a shortcut for "<%echo .." %> 13

The first way is only available if short tags have been enabled. This can be done via the short_tags() function, by enabling the short_open_tag configuration setting in the PHP config file, or by compiling PHP with the --enable-short-tags option to configure.

The fourth way is only available if ASP-style tags have been enabled using the asp_tags configuration setting.

The closing tag for the block will include the immediately trailing newline if one is present.