What does '<?=' mean in PHP?
It's a shorthand for this:
<?php echo $a; ?>They're called short tags; see example #2 in the documentation.
Since it wouldn't add any value to repeat that it means echo, I thought you'd like to see what means in PHP exactly:
Array( [0] => Array ( [0] => 368 // T_OPEN_TAG_WITH_ECHO [1] => <?= [2] => 1 ) [1] => Array ( [0] => 309 // T_VARIABLE [1] => $a [2] => 1 ) [2] => ; // UNKNOWN (because it is optional (ignored)) [3] => Array ( [0] => 369 // T_CLOSE_TAG [1] => ?> [2] => 1 ))You can use this code to test it yourself:
$tokens = token_get_all('<?=$a;?>');print_r($tokens);foreach($tokens as $token){ echo token_name((int) $token[0]), PHP_EOL;}From the List of Parser Tokens, here is what T_OPEN_TAG_WITH_ECHO links to.