diff bet. echo,print and printf

[barbara1712]

Hello All,

I want to know the exact difference between echo,print and printf
I want to know weather print if a function or not.

Thanks,

[kigoobe]

Print is not a function, but a language construct.

Echo tends to be insignificantly faster than print.

Never used printf.

[Ize]

I just took some tests:

$execution_start = microtime(true);
echo '<ul>';
for ($i=0; $i<10000; $i++)
{
    echo '<li>new string ' .$i. '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
$execution_end = microtime(true);
$execution_time = $execution_end - $execution_start;
print '<p>took: ' . round($execution_time,4) . ' seconds</p>'; 

with both print and echo.
I executed 10 times for each function and these are the average results:

echo: 0.09278 seconds
print: 0.09146 seconds

Rather insignificant indeed

[barbara1712]

I come to know that printf is a function which returns the value of 1 or 0
depending upon success.
But still I am having doubt in echo and print.

[kigoobe]

For all practical purposes, I think you can use any of them, echo or print, without any concern.

[devbanana]

echo returns no value
print returns a success value
printf prints a formatted string

For example:

printf("Hello %s\n", $name);