I've read somewhere, and I don't remember where, that echo is a more efficient way of outputting data then print.
Why does Drupal core use print so much? Is there any special reason behind that?
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1On a sidenote: print will always return 1 as a value, echo won't return anything. I guess that might be useful in some cases.– BartCommented Jun 21, 2011 at 14:26
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What kind of case that might be?– jayarjoCommented Jun 21, 2011 at 17:38
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I've wondered that too! Good question!– aendraCommented Jul 8, 2011 at 6:17
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1 Answer
echo is only faster in academic environments. The difference is very marginal. A quick benchmark I just did: The time fetching one row from a table with more than 2000 nodes is 1 unit.
In order to get an improvement of 1 unit, I would need to replace about 3.700.000 (over 3 milion) print statements with echo. In other words, if you want performance improvements, this is hardly the place to start.
Seen that print can be used in a much wider range of cases then echo, the first has some advantages. It leaves you three options:
- Always use
print - Use
echowhere possible and fallback onprint - Use
echoalways and refactor your code ifechocannot be used, to use it
Drupal has defaulted on the first.
To answer your actual question as to why this was chosen: It was not. It simply grew this way.
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Could you provide an example of when echo cannot be used? It's just I can't imagine any at the moment.– jayarjoCommented Jun 21, 2011 at 17:41
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6The most obvious is
if (! print some_method() ) {print some_other_method()}. Since print returns a TRUE if it actually printed something. Echo returns nothing, which is why it is faster too. Another example you will see isreturn print $somevalueat the end of a method to return the status.– berkesCommented Jun 27, 2011 at 8:36