PHP: Differences Between echo and print

Both echo and print are PHP language constructs (and not exactly functions), and can be used without parentheses.

There are a few differences between the two and we note them in the sections below.

1) echo accepts multiple comma-separated arguments, print only 1

echo can take several arguments (as illustrated below) 

					
						<?php
							echo 'Hello', ' ', 'Angni', ' ', 'Sona'; // Hello Angni Sona 
						?>

whereas print can accept only one, and the below script returns an error 

					
						<?php
							print 'Hello', ' ', 'Angni', ' ', 'Sona'; // error 
						?>

But even for echo, it works only without parentheses. Passing comma-separated strings as arguments into the parentheses (as shown below) will result in an error 

					
						<?php
							echo('Hello', ' ', 'Angni', ' ', 'Sona'); // error 
						?>

2) print returns 1, echo none

print has a return value 1, echo has none. It can be checked by executing the below script. Since print always returns 1, we can echo it 

					
						<?php
							echo print(''); // 1
						?>

whereas the below line results in an error, as echo does not have a return value 

					
						<?php
							echo echo(''); // error
						?>

3) echo is faster than print - in microseconds (μs)!

There are some bench mark tests/results available for echo v. print, and echo is slightly faster than print. But the differences are always in microseconds (μs). I have listed two links below where you may find the comparisons