PHP help with coding

[Coel]

Hello im only 14 so there are some things i dont understand.

I have spent 3 days nw working on PHP and i have become stuck, well dont know what 1 thing means.

it is the \n, what is this?

I know about the echo and using the \ to make a quotation mark. So i know about that.

It says somthing about making a new line for a character, so tell me why should i use this and what it atually means.

Thanks

[juicelooser]

Yeah, all \n does is make a new line.

[shaticus]

"\" is an escape character. It really tells the computer you want to put a special character or do something that should not be treated as text.
(I.E. \n creates a new line, \" prints a quote, and \\ should print a singe \"

[aym]

\ has the speical effect shaticus mentioned when used in double quotations.

PHP Code:

echo "Hi!\n"; // output is Hi! then a new line starts
echo 'Hi!\n'; // output is Hi!\n 


You may not see the new line if you are working with HTML documents, to see the new line, open the page's source.

[mairving]

The main reason to use a new line is to make your HTML code more readable. Here is an example without the new line:

PHP Code:

echo "<table><tr><td><p>Content here</p></td></tr></table>";

outputs: 

<table><tr><td><p>Content here</p></td></tr></table> 


With the new line

PHP Code:

echo "<table>\n";
echo "<tr>\n";
echo "<td><p>Content here</p></td>\n";
echo "</tr>\n";
echo "</table>\n";

outputs:

<table>
<tr>
<td><p>Content here</p></td>
</tr>
</table> 


So much easier to read, validate and troubleshoot with the newline.