Syntax

A string literal can be specified in four different ways:

• single quoted
• double quoted
• heredoc syntax
• nowdoc syntax

<?php
echo 'this is a simple string';

echo 'You can also have embedded newlines in
strings this way as it is
okay to do';

// Outputs: Arnold once said: "I'll be back"
echo 'Arnold once said: "I\'ll be back"';

// Outputs: You deleted C:\*.*?
echo 'You deleted C:\\*.*?';

// Outputs: You deleted C:\*.*?
echo 'You deleted C:\*.*?';

// Outputs: This will not expand: \n a newline
echo 'This will not expand: \n a newline';

// Outputs: Variables do not $expand $either
echo 'Variables do not $expand $either';
?>

<?php
// no indentation
echo <<<END
      a
     b
    c
\n
END;

// 4 spaces of indentation
echo <<<END
      a
     b
    c
    END;

      a
     b
    c

  a
 b
c

<?php
echo <<<END
  a
 b
c
   END;

PHP Parse error:  Invalid body indentation level (expecting an indentation level of at least 3) in example.php on line 4

<?php
// All the following code do not work.

// different indentation for body (spaces) ending marker (tabs)
{
    echo <<<END
     a
        END;
}

// mixing spaces and tabs in body
{
    echo <<<END
        a
     END;
}

// mixing spaces and tabs in ending marker
{
    echo <<<END
          a
         END;
}

PHP Parse error:  Invalid indentation - tabs and spaces cannot be mixed in example.php line 8

<?php
$values = [<<<END
a
  b
    c
END, 'd e f'];
var_dump($values);

array(2) {
  [0] =>
  string(11) "a
  b
    c"
  [1] =>
  string(5) "d e f"
}

<?php
$values = [<<<END
a
b
END ING
END, 'd e f'];

PHP Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected identifier "ING", expecting "]" in example.php on line 6

<?php
class foo {
    public $bar = <<<EOT
bar
    EOT;
}
// Identifier must not be indented
?>

<?php
class foo {
    public $bar = <<<EOT
bar
EOT;
}
?>

<?php
$str = <<<EOD
Example of string
spanning multiple lines
using heredoc syntax.
EOD;

/* More complex example, with variables. */
class foo
{
    var $foo;
    var $bar;

    function __construct()
    {
        $this->foo = 'Foo';
        $this->bar = array('Bar1', 'Bar2', 'Bar3');
    }
}

$foo = new foo();
$name = 'MyName';

echo <<<EOT
My name is "$name". I am printing some $foo->foo.
Now, I am printing some {$foo->bar[1]}.
This should print a capital 'A': \x41
EOT;
?>

My name is "MyName". I am printing some Foo.
Now, I am printing some Bar2.
This should print a capital 'A': A

<?php
var_dump(array(<<<EOD
foobar!
EOD
));
?>

<?php
// Static variables
function foo()
{
    static $bar = <<<LABEL
Nothing in here...
LABEL;
}

// Class properties/constants
class foo
{
    const BAR = <<<FOOBAR
Constant example
FOOBAR;

    public $baz = <<<FOOBAR
Property example
FOOBAR;
}
?>

<?php
echo <<<"FOOBAR"
Hello World!
FOOBAR;
?>

<?php
echo <<<'EOD'
Example of string spanning multiple lines
using nowdoc syntax. Backslashes are always treated literally,
e.g. \\ and \'.
EOD;

Example of string spanning multiple lines
using nowdoc syntax. Backslashes are always treated literally,
e.g. \\ and \'.

<?php
class foo
{
    public $foo;
    public $bar;

    function __construct()
    {
        $this->foo = 'Foo';
        $this->bar = array('Bar1', 'Bar2', 'Bar3');
    }
}

$foo = new foo();
$name = 'MyName';

echo <<<'EOT'
My name is "$name". I am printing some $foo->foo.
Now, I am printing some {$foo->bar[1]}.
This should not print a capital 'A': \x41
EOT;
?>

My name is "$name". I am printing some $foo->foo.
Now, I am printing some {$foo->bar[1]}.
This should not print a capital 'A': \x41

<?php
class foo {
    public $bar = <<<'EOT'
bar
EOT;
}
?>

<?php
$juice = "apple";

echo "He drank some $juice juice." . PHP_EOL;

?>

He drank some apple juice.

string-variable::
     variable-name   (offset-or-property)?
   | ${   expression   }

offset-or-property::
     offset-in-string
   | property-in-string

offset-in-string::
     [   name   ]
   | [   variable-name   ]
   | [   integer-literal   ]

property-in-string::
     ->  name

variable-name::
     $   name

name::
     [a-zA-Z_\x80-\xff][a-zA-Z0-9_\x80-\xff]*

<?php
const foo = 'bar';
$foo = 'foo';
$bar = 'bar';
var_dump("${foo}");
var_dump("${(foo)}");
?>

Deprecated: Using ${var} in strings is deprecated, use {$var} instead in file on line 6

Deprecated: Using ${expr} (variable variables) in strings is deprecated, use {${expr}} instead in file on line 9
string(3) "foo"
string(3) "bar"

string(3) "foo"
string(3) "bar"

<?php
$juices = array("apple", "orange", "string_key" => "purple");

echo "He drank some $juices[0] juice.";
echo PHP_EOL;
echo "He drank some $juices[1] juice.";
echo PHP_EOL;
echo "He drank some $juices[string_key] juice.";
echo PHP_EOL;

class A {
    public $s = "string";
}

$o = new A();

echo "Object value: $o->s.";
?>

He drank some apple juice.
He drank some orange juice.
He drank some purple juice.
Object value: string.

<?php
$string = 'string';
echo "The character at index -2 is $string[-2].", PHP_EOL;
$string[-3] = 'o';
echo "Changing the character at index -3 to o gives $string.", PHP_EOL;
?>

The character at index -2 is n.
Changing the character at index -3 to o gives strong.

<?php

const DATA_KEY = 'const-key';
$great = 'fantastic';
$arr = [
    '1',
    '2',
    '3',
    [41, 42, 43],
    'key' => 'Indexed value',
    'const-key' => 'Key with minus sign',
    'foo' => ['foo1', 'foo2', 'foo3']
];

// Won't work, outputs: This is { fantastic}
echo "This is { $great}";

// Works, outputs: This is fantastic
echo "This is {$great}";

class Square {
    public $width;

    public function __construct(int $width) { $this->width = $width; }
}

$square = new Square(5);

// Works
echo "This square is {$square->width}00 centimeters wide.";


// Works, quoted keys only work using the curly brace syntax
echo "This works: {$arr['key']}";


// Works
echo "This works: {$arr[3][2]}";

echo "This works: {$arr[DATA_KEY]}";

// When using multidimensional arrays, always use braces around arrays
// when inside of strings
echo "This works: {$arr['foo'][2]}";

echo "This works: {$obj->values[3]->name}";

echo "This works: {$obj->$staticProp}";

// Won't work, outputs: C:\folder\{fantastic}.txt
echo "C:\folder\{$great}.txt";

// Works, outputs: C:\folder\fantastic.txt
echo "C:\\folder\\{$great}.txt";
?>

<?php
// Get the first character of a string
$str = 'This is a test.';
$first = $str[0];

// Get the third character of a string
$third = $str[2];

// Get the last character of a string.
$str = 'This is still a test.';
$last = $str[strlen($str)-1];

// Modify the last character of a string
$str = 'Look at the sea';
$str[strlen($str)-1] = 'e';

?>

<?php
$str = 'abc';

var_dump($str['1']);
var_dump(isset($str['1']));

var_dump($str['1.0']);
var_dump(isset($str['1.0']));

var_dump($str['x']);
var_dump(isset($str['x']));

var_dump($str['1x']);
var_dump(isset($str['1x']));
?>

string(1) "b"
bool(true)

Warning: Illegal string offset '1.0' in /tmp/t.php on line 7
string(1) "b"
bool(false)

Warning: Illegal string offset 'x' in /tmp/t.php on line 9
string(1) "a"
bool(false)
string(1) "b"
bool(false)

Useful functions and operators

Strings may be concatenated using the '.' (dot) operator. Note that the '+' (addition) operator will not work for this. See String operators for more information.

There are a number of useful functions for string manipulation.

See the string functions section for general functions, and the Perl-compatible regular expression functions for advanced find & replace functionality.

There are also functions for URL strings, and functions to encrypt/decrypt strings (Sodium and Hash).

Finally, see also the character type functions.

Converting to string

A value can be converted to a string using the (string) cast or the strval function. String conversion is automatically done in the scope of an expression where a string is needed. This happens when using the echo or print functions, or when a variable is compared to a string. The sections on Types and Type Juggling will make the following clearer. See also the settype function.

A bool true value is converted to the string "1". bool false is converted to "" (the empty string). This allows conversion back and forth between bool and string values.

An int or float is converted to a string representing the number textually (including the exponent part for floats). Floating point numbers can be converted using exponential notation (4.1E+6).

Note:

As of PHP 8.0.0, the decimal point character is always a period ("."). Prior to PHP 8.0.0, the decimal point character is defined in the script's locale (category LC_NUMERIC). See the setlocale function.

Arrays are always converted to the string "Array"; because of this, echo and print can not by themselves show the contents of an array. To view a single element, use a construction such as echo $arr['foo']. See below for tips on viewing the entire contents.

In order to convert objects to string, the magic method __toString must be used.

Resources are always converted to strings with the structure "Resource id #1", where 1 is the resource number assigned to the resource by PHP at runtime. While the exact structure of this string should not be relied on and is subject to change, it will always be unique for a given resource within the lifetime of a script being executed (ie a Web request or CLI process) and won't be reused. To get a resource's type, use the get_resource_type function.

null is always converted to an empty string.

As stated above, directly converting an array, object, or resource to a string does not provide any useful information about the value beyond its type. See the functions print_r and var_dump for more effective means of inspecting the contents of these types.

Most PHP values can also be converted to strings for permanent storage. This method is called serialization, and is performed by the serialize function.

Details of the String Type

The string in PHP is implemented as an array of bytes and an integer indicating the length of the buffer. It has no information about how those bytes translate to characters, leaving that task to the programmer. There are no limitations on the values the string can be composed of; in particular, bytes with value 0 (“NUL bytes”) are allowed anywhere in the string (however, a few functions, said in this manual not to be “binary safe”, may hand off the strings to libraries that ignore data after a NUL byte.)

This nature of the string type explains why there is no separate “byte” type in PHP – strings take this role. Functions that return no textual data – for instance, arbitrary data read from a network socket – will still return strings.

Given that PHP does not dictate a specific encoding for strings, one might wonder how string literals are encoded. For instance, is the string "á" equivalent to "\xE1" (ISO-8859-1), "\xC3\xA1" (UTF-8, C form), "\x61\xCC\x81" (UTF-8, D form) or any other possible representation? The answer is that string will be encoded in whatever fashion it is encoded in the script file. Thus, if the script is written in ISO-8859-1, the string will be encoded in ISO-8859-1 and so on. However, this does not apply if Zend Multibyte is enabled; in that case, the script may be written in an arbitrary encoding (which is explicitly declared or is detected) and then converted to a certain internal encoding, which is then the encoding that will be used for the string literals. Note that there are some constraints on the encoding of the script (or on the internal encoding, should Zend Multibyte be enabled) – this almost always means that this encoding should be a compatible superset of ASCII, such as UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1. Note, however, that state-dependent encodings where the same byte values can be used in initial and non-initial shift states may be problematic.

Of course, in order to be useful, functions that operate on text may have to make some assumptions about how the string is encoded. Unfortunately, there is much variation on this matter throughout PHP’s functions:

• Some functions assume that the string is encoded in some (any) single-byte encoding, but they do not need to interpret those bytes as specific characters. This is case of, for instance, substr, strpos, strlen or strcmp. Another way to think of these functions is that operate on memory buffers, i.e., they work with bytes and byte offsets.
• Other functions are passed the encoding of the string, possibly they also assume a default if no such information is given. This is the case of htmlentities and the majority of the functions in the mbstring extension.
• Others use the current locale (see setlocale), but operate byte-by-byte.
• Finally, they may just assume the string is using a specific encoding, usually UTF-8. This is the case of most functions in the intl extension and in the PCRE extension (in the last case, only when the u modifier is used).

Ultimately, this means writing correct programs using Unicode depends on carefully avoiding functions that will not work and that most likely will corrupt the data and using instead the functions that do behave correctly, generally from the intl and mbstring extensions. However, using functions that can handle Unicode encodings is just the beginning. No matter the functions the language provides, it is essential to know the Unicode specification. For instance, a program that assumes there is only uppercase and lowercase is making a wrong assumption.