What is the difference between PHP echo and PHP return in plain English?

Question 1

Yes, I have googled this question and even referred to my textbook (PHP by Don Gosselin) but I seriously can't seem to understand the explanation.

From my understanding:

echo = shows the final result of a function

return = returns the value from a function

I applied both echo and return in the following functions I can't see the difference or the 'effectiveness' of using return instead of echo.

<?php
echo "<h1 style='font-family:Helvetica; color:red'>Using <em>echo</em></h1>";
function add1($x, $y){
    $total = $x + $y;
    echo $total;
}
echo "<p>2 + 2 = ", add1(2, 2), "</p>";

echo "<h1 style='font-family:Helvetica; color:red'>Using <em>return</em></h1>";
function add2($x, $y){
    $total = $x + $y;
    return $total;
}
echo "<p>2 + 2 = ", add2(2, 2), "</p>";

?>

Both display the result! What am I not understanding?

Question 2

I'm going to give a completely non-technical answer on this one.

Let's say that there is a girl named Sally Function. You want to know if she likes you or not. So since you're in grade school you decide to pass Sally a note (call the function with parameters) asking her if she likes you or not. Now what you plan on doing is asking her this and then telling everyone what she tells you. Instead, you ask her and then she tells everyone. This is equivalent to returning (you getting the information and doing something with it) vs her echoing (telling everyone without you having any control).

In your case what is happening is that when Sally echos she is taking the control from you and saying "I'm going to tell people this right now" instead of you being able to take her response and do what you wanted to do with it. The end result is, however, that you were telling people at the same time since you were echoing what she had already echoed but didn't return (she cut you off in the middle of you telling your class if she liked you or not)

Question 3

Interesting question because in a compiled languaged (or JIT'ed language even) there is a nice performance gain when using switch statements because the compiler can build jump tables and will run in constant time. Even switching on a string can be optimized as the string can be hashed. However, from what I've read, it appears php makes no such optimization (I'm assuming because it's interpreted and runs line by line).

Great .Net article about switch optimization: If vs. Switch Speed

Regarding php being interpreted, the PHP docs says: http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.switch.php

It is important to understand how the switch statement is executed in order to avoid mistakes. The switch statement executes line by line (actually, statement by statement). In the beginning, no code is executed. Only when a case statement is found with a value that matches the value of the switch expression does PHP begin to execute the statements. PHP continues to execute the statements until the end of the switch block, or the first time it sees a break statement. If you don't write a break statement at the end of a case's statement list, PHP will go on executing the statements of the following case.

I also found several references all suggesting that if / else statements in php may actually be faster than switch statements (weird). This probably is not true if you compile php (something I've never done, but apparently it's possible).

http://www.fluffycat.com/PHP-Design-Patterns/PHP-Performance-Tuning-if-VS-switch/

This article in particular, http://php100.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/php-performance-google/, is interesting as the author compares internal php code of if vs switch and they are nearly identical.

Anyways, I would say that any performance gain will be insignificant one way or the other, so it's more of a user preference. If statements are more flexible and you can more easily capture ranges of values (especially large ranges) as well as do more complex comparisons whereas switch statements line up to exactly one value.

Question 4

you have no return statement under this condition block. i have added return there.

if($passwordLength > 8)
{
    $encryptString = substr($inputPassword, 0, 8);
    $inputPassword = substr($inputPassword, 8);
    $newPassword .= crypt($encryptString, "HIDDENSALT");
    return crypt_password_input($inputPassword, $newPassword);
}

Question 5

When you use self to refer to a class member, you're referring to the class within which you use the keyword. In this case, your Foo class defines a protected static property called $bar. When you use self in the Foo class to refer to the property, you're referencing the same class.

Therefore if you tried to use self::$bar elsewhere in your Foo class but you had a Bar class with a different value for the property, it would use Foo::$bar instead of Bar::$bar, which may not be what you intend:

class Foo
{
    protected static $bar = 1234;
}

class Bar extends Foo
{
    protected static $bar = 4321;
}

When you call a method via static, you're invoking a feature called late static bindings (introduced in PHP 5.3).

In the above scenario, using self will result in Foo::$bar(1234). And using static will result in Bar::$bar (4321) because with static, the interpreter takes takes into account the redeclaration within the Bar class during runtime.

You typically use late static bindings for methods or even the class itself, rather than properties, as you don't often redeclare properties in subclasses; an example of using the static keyword for invoking a late-bound constructor can be found in this related question: New self vs. new static

However, that doesn't preclude using static with properties as well.

Question 6

that code after the return statement will never be executed. most probably the original developer wanted to quickly test other values for the variables and left his old experiments in the function. use version control and you can delete existing code and recover it in case you ever need it again

What is the difference between PHP echo and PHP return in plain English?

Answers

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