In PHP, what does “<<<” represent?

Question

For example:

$sql = <<<MySQL_QUERY

Answer 1

That's heredoc syntax. You start a heredoc string by putting <<< plus a token of your choice, and terminate it by putting only the token (and nothing else!) on a new line. As a convenience, there is one exception: you are allowed to add a single semicolon after the end delimiter.

Example:

echo <<<HEREDOC
This is a heredoc string.

Newlines and everything else is preserved.
HEREDOC;

Answer 2

It is the start of a string that uses the HEREDOC syntax.

A third way to delimit strings is the heredoc syntax: <<<.

After this operator, an identifier is provided, then a newline. The string itself follows, and then the same identifier again to close the quotation.

Answer 3

This is called a heredoc, and it lets you do a long piece of text that goes over several lines. You can put PHP variables in there and they will replace with the value. The word CHART can be anything. It just needs to be the same to start and stop where the quoted text begins.

You could do the same thing by appending multiple quoted strings, but this is cleaner most of the time for extended documents like this HTML text. There is also something called a nowdoc which is like a single quote string in PHP, but these won't let you use variables inside them.

Answer 4

It's PHP's heredoc.

Example:

$sql = <<<MySQL_QUERY
SELECT * 
FROM TAB 
WHERE A = 1 AND B = 2 
MySQL_QUERY;           

Answer 5

It's a heredoc, for long strings that you don't have to worry about quotation marks and whatnot. If you notice the word CHART and then there's a line that says CHART;, that indicates the end of the string.

The important thing to remember when using this format is that whatever string you use to define the end of the string (such as CHART in this case), that word has to appear on a line on its own, followed by a semicolon, and NO characters can occur after the semicolon on the same line, even whitespace, otherwise PHP thinks it's part of the string.

Answer 6

It's the heredoc syntax.

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