print vs. echo

[Epsilon]

Is there really any difference between print and echo?. Say, for example, when printing out a bunch of HTML to the web browser. Any particular reason to use one over the other?

[sde]

good question .. u don't need () with echo?

[Epsilon]

I use both of them pretty regularly and I never use the parenthesis for either. For some reason I've just always been in the habit of using 'print' for longer lines and 'echo' for short ones, especially if I just need to print a variable.

But as I got to thinking about it, I'm not sure why I ever developed that habit, as it seems to me that they are completely interchangable?

[sde]

ah hah

There is a difference between the two, but speed-wise it
should be irrelevant which one you use. print() behaves
like a function in that you can do:

$ret = print "Hello World";

And $ret will be 1

That means that print can be used as part of a more complex
expression where echo cannot. print is also part of the
precedence table which it needs to be if it is to be used
within a complex expression. It is just about at the bottom
of the precendence list though. Only "," AND, OR and XOR
are lower.

echo is marginally faster since it doesn't set a return
value if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty.

If the grammar is:

echo expression [, expression[, expression] ... ]

Then

echo ( expression, expression )

is not valid. ( expression ) reduces to just an expression
so this would be valid:

echo ("howdy"),("partner");

but you would simply write this as:

echo "howdy","partner";

if you wanted to use two expression. Putting the brackets (which are
parentheses, not brackets) in there serves no
purpose since there is no operator
precendence issue with a single expression like that.