May 21st, 2015 at 04:51 PM

Heredocs and Nowdocs in PHP

Nowdocs are to single-quoted strings what heredocs are to double-quoted strings. A nowdoc is specified similarly to a heredoc, but no parsing is done inside a nowdoc. The construct is ideal for embedding PHP code or other large blocks of text without the need for escaping.

HEREDOC

*A HEREDOC where no escaping is required.

$foo = 'foo';

$here = <<<HERE
    I'm here, $foo!
HERE;

echo $here;

NOWDOC

$foo = 'foo';
$now = <<<'NOW'
    I'm now, $foo!
NOW;

echo $now;

$here is "I'm here, bar!", while $now is "I'm now, $foo!". If you don't need variable interpolation but need special characters like $ inside your string, Nowdocs are easier to use. That's all.