Kevin Powell - Community•13mo ago

PHP - What's going on here?

Hi.. Quite new to LAMPy stuff - I'm trying to pick apart a bit of code here. Can someone explain what's going on? I get what it's doing, I just can't put a name to the functionality to explore it further if that makes sense.

php > unset ($error);
php > echo (empty($error)) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';
The string is empty
php > $error = "Something";
php > echo (empty($error)) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';
The string has something in
php >

Obviously the ? and : is doing some decision making based on a true/false from the empty($error) - is this part of 'echo' or something else? Googling "PHP echo ? :" doesn't yield much of interest 🙂 cheers!

5 Replies

ErickO•13mo ago

Ternary operator and it is not party of echo, no, just a comparison operator that exists

Jochem•13mo ago

echo (empty($error)) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';

echo (empty($error)) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';

is a fancy way of writing

if (empty($error)) {
  echo 'The string is empty';
} else {
  echo 'The string has something in';
}

if (empty($error)) {
  echo 'The string is empty';
} else {
  echo 'The string has something in';
}

foggy•13mo ago

Got it!! Thanks a lot! Makes sense... (condition) ? true : false ;

Jochem•13mo ago

echo prints out the result of whatever expression follows it

echo 1+2;

echo 1+2;

would print 3 to the screen. So what you're doing with

echo (empty($error)) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';

echo (empty($error)) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';

is telling PHP to echo the result of

empty($error) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';

empty($error) ? 'The string is empty' : 'The string has something in';

which is the part before the : if the part before ? is true, and the part after if it's false

foggy•13mo ago

yep makes total sense thanks both... !

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PHP - What's going on here?