On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Rick Dwyer <rpdwyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi List. > I've mentioned before that I am both just beginning to learn PHP AND I have inherited a number of pages that I'm trying to clean up the w3c validation on. > > Something that confuses me is how the code on the page is written where in one instance, it follows this: > > echo "<table border='1'><tr>.... > > And elsewhere on the page it follows: > > echo '<table border="1"><tr>.... > > In what I've read and from many of the suggestions from this board, the latter seems to be the better way to code, generally speaking. > > So given that the page has javascript in it, perhaps the reason for the previous developer switching between the two was for ease of incorporating JS?.... Don't really know... but what I would like to know is it considered poor coding switch between the two on a single page or is it perfectly acceptable? > > 2nd question, in the 3 lines below: > > $_SESSION['newpage'] = $newpage; > $checkstat = "select field from table where fieldid = $field_id"; > $result1 = @mysql_query($checkstat,$connection) or die("Couldn't execute query"); You could always do: $result1 = mysql_query("SELECT field FROM table WHERE fieldid = $field_id", $connection) or die("Couldn't execute query"); a) I capped SQL verbs. Make it more readable :) b) why make a variable just to throw it in the next line? c) Make sure $field_id is truly an integer. If not, intval, mysql_escape_string, something along those lines. Also put it in single quotes if not an integer. d) I left double quotes in the error, because it has a single quote inside of it. The small micro-optimization performance you might get is probably not worth the readability factor. My general rules of thumb: I use double quotes if: a) I have single quotes inside the string b) I need variables to be parsed c) I need control characters like \n parsed I use single quotes always: a) For array indexes $foo['bar'] b) If I don't need variable parsing, control characters, etc. why not? You'll get a minimal performance gain by using single quotes everywhere in PHP where you don't -need- double quotes, but that's a micro-optimization and there's probably more important things for you to be doing. For HTML, -always- use double quotes. <tag attribute="bar" /> is the right way. <tag attribute='bar' /> is the wrong way. I'd go into more explanation but there simply doesn't need to be one. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php