PHP Closing Tag

[toxin]

Just heard about this today. I am sure you all may know but thought to share to anyone that does not.
The PHP closing tag on a PHP document ?> is optional to the PHP parser. However, if used, any whitespace following the closing tag, whether introduced by the developer, user, or an FTP application, can cause unwanted output, PHP errors, or if the latter are suppressed, blank pages. For this reason, all PHP files should OMIT the closing PHP tag, and instead use a comment block to mark the end of file and it's location relative to the application root. This allows you to still identify a file as being complete and not truncated.

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/coding-standard.php-file-formatting.html

[Xavier]

That is true. CodeIgniter developers encourage this method of marking the end of a PHP file.

Code: [Select]

INCORRECT:
<?php 
echo "Here's my code!"; 
?>

CORRECT:
<?php 
echo "Here's my code!"; 
/* End of file myfile.php */ 
/* Location: ./system/modules/mymodule/myfile.php */ 
And I use it too. More about this and other techniques here:

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/styleguide.html#php_closing_tag

[JGadrow]

The Drupal CMS also encourages this.

[Nox]

can cause unwanted output, PHP errors, or if the latter are suppressed, blank pages.

Doesn't hurt to write those 2 more characters then

[Chris]

Doesn't hurt to write those 2 more characters then

LOL, love this answer. I will stick to the 2 additional chars as well

[jannesiera]

can cause unwanted output, PHP errors, or if the latter are suppressed, blank pages.

Doesn't hurt to write those 2 more characters then

Yeah, I kinda like errors... at least you know what's going on then.

[Xavier]

I find FirePHP more suitable for PHP debugging than regular errors. Together with Firebug (FF plugin) it makes a great debugging tool for all your JavaScript and PHP code.

http://getfirebug.com/
http://firephp.org/