Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

PHP

Kyle Block
Kyle Block
9,297 Points
Posted by Kyle Block
Kyle Block
9,297 Points

why single quotes?

Is there any special reason when entering information into an array you use single quotes instead of double quotes? Have seen several other videos where they will do this and they never explain if it has a purpose or if it's just user preference.

Jeremy Canela
seal-mask
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Jeremy Canela
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 30,766 Points
Jeremy Canela
.a{fill-rule:evenodd;}techdegree seal-36
Jeremy Canela
Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree Graduate 30,766 Points

You don't have to use single quotes. You might want to use it if you use double quotes inside single quotes so you don't have to escape the single quotes.

$array = array(' "This will work" ');
$array2 = array(" "This will not work" ");

1 Answer

Sergey Podgornyy
Sergey Podgornyy
20,660 Points
Sergey Podgornyy
Sergey Podgornyy
20,660 Points

Quotes more important for strings. I think you need to know the following:

  1. Single quoted strings will display things almost completely "as is." Variables and most escape sequences will not be interpreted. The exception is that to display a literal single quote, you can escape it with a back slash \', and to display a back slash, you can escape it with another backslash \\ .

  2. Double quote strings will display a host of escaped characters (including some regexes), and variables in the strings will be evaluated. An important point here is that you can use curly braces to isolate the name of the variable you want evaluated. For example let's say you have the variable $type and you what to echo "The $types are" That will look for the variable $types. To get around this use echo "The {$type}s are" You can put the left brace before or after the dollar sign. Take a look at string parsing to see how to use array variables and such.