On 10/3/12 9:57 PM, David McGlone wrote:
Absolutely. I also think I learned that return can also work like echo if the
code is written correctly.
Echo and return are two completely different things in PHP. Echo is used
for printing a value out in a document -- for instance, as follows, in
the midst of a chunk of HTML:
<table>
<tr><td>Name:</td><td><?php echo $name; ?></td><tr>
<tr><td>Email:</td><td><?php echo $email; ?></td></tr>
</table>
In the above example, echo is being used to output the value specified
in the variable $name or $email (which would have been previously set)
It can also be used to print the return value of a function. Return, in
and of itself, does not print anything; it is used to ascribe a
particular value to an instance of a function.
So for instance, if you have a function:
function getEmail() {
$name = 'johnsmith';
$email = $name . '@sample.com';
return $email;
}
then any called instance of the function getEmail() will, in a sense,
have the value of the return statement (in a sense, the code inside the
function runs and *returns* a value in place of itself).
So
$variable = getEmail();
//variable is now equal to 'johnsmith@xxxxxxxxxx'
You could then echo this value, if you wanted to.
echo getEmail(); //prints the value returned by getEmail()
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