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J. Mick
Asked: 2020-08-28 11:16:25 +0800 CST 2020-08-28 11:16:25 +0800 CST

How to create spaces and line breaks in PHP with single quotes?

  • 772

Line breaks in PHP "\n" with double quotes works perfectly.

echo "Primera linea php a separar de la segunda"."\n";

But with single quotes, it doesn't work

echo 'Primera linea php a separar de la segunda"."\n';

It throws the following error message

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '\' (T_NS_SEPARATOR), expecting ',' or ';' in C:\xampp\jobs\index.php on line 38

php

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Documentation

    According to the PHP Official Site .

    The easiest way to specify a string is to delimit it with single quotes (the ' character ).

    To specify a literal single quote, it must be escaped with a backslash (\). To specify a literal backslash, double it (\\). All other instances of backslashes will be treated as a literal backslash: this means that other escape sequences that might be used, such as \r or \n, will be displayed literally as specified, rather than having any other special meaning .

    What does this tell us?

    Any character that is enclosed in single quotes will be taken as a literal character and its content will not be interpolated .

    Possible solutions

    <?php
    echo 'Un elefante se balanceaba' . PHP_EOL;
    echo 'Sobre la tela de una araña' . "\n";
?>

    Result

    Un elefante se balanceaba
Sobre la tela de una araña

    Explanation

    Ignoring the fact of the single quote restriction, you can either use the concatenation operator .(dot) and add a newline to the string, or you can use the constant PHP_EOLwhose meaning is derived from the word End Of Line, which will add at the end of your text a line break.

    Online example!

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  2. is misspelled if you start a string with ''(single quotes) you must start and end with single quotes

    echo 'Primera linea php a separar de la segunda' . '\n';

    your mistake is putting double quotes in a str with single quotes

    • 0