Strings can be specified using one of two sets of delimiters.
If the string is enclosed in double-quotes ("), variables within the string will be expanded (subject to some parsing limitations). As in C and Perl, the backslash ("\") character can be used in specifying special characters:
Table 6-1. Escaped characters
| sequence | meaning |
|---|---|
| \n | linefeed (LF or 0x0A in ASCII) |
| \r | carriage return (CR or 0x0D in ASCII) |
| \t | horizontal tab (HT or 0x09 in ASCII) |
| \\ | backslash |
| \$ | dollar sign |
| \" | double-quote |
| \[0-7]{1,3} | the sequence of characters matching the regular expression is a character in octal notation |
| \x[0-9A-Fa-f]{1,2} | the sequence of characters matching the regular expression is a character in hexadecimal notation |
You can escape any other character, but a warning will be issued at the highest warning level.
The second way to delimit a string uses the single-quote ("'") character. When a string is enclosed in single quotes, the only escapes that will be understood are "\\" and "\'". This is for convenience, so that you can have single-quotes and backslashes in a single-quoted string. Variables will not be expanded inside a single-quoted string.
Another way to delimit strings is by using here doc syntax ("<<<"). One should provide an identifier after <<<, then the string, and then the same identifier to close the quotation. The closing identifier must begin in the first column of the line. The label used must follow the same naming rules as any other label in PHP: it must co