Newsgroups: php.internals
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Xref: news.php.net php.internals:104545
Message-ID: <5c7ae08d.1c69fb81.29486.402d@mx.google.com>
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2019 11:59:09 -0800 (PST)
To: internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: print with newline
From: svnpenn@gmail.com (Steven Penny)

with PHP, several methods are available to produce output:

    echo "hello world\n";
    print "hello world\n";
    print_r("hello world\n");
    var_export("hello world\n");

However all these methods have something in common: they do not produce their
own newline. With each method, the user is required to provide a newline with
"\n", PHP_EOL or similar. This is bothersome because many other programming
languages offer such a method. For example Python:

    print('hello world')

Perl:

    use feature say;
    say 'hello world';

Ruby:

    puts 'hello world'

Lua:

    print 'hello world'

Even C:

    #include <stdio.h>
    int main() {
       puts("hello world");
    }

Out of the above examples, I would say Perl and Ruby are most similar to PHP, in
that they also have the "print" method:

    $ perl -e 'print 2; print 3;'
    23

    $ ruby -e 'print 2; print 3;'
    23

However even in this case, "print" can be made to produce a newline by default:

    $ perl -e '$\ = "\n"; print 2; print 3;'
    2
    3

    $ ruby -e '$\ = "\n"; print 2; print 3;'
    2
    3

My request would be one of the following:

1. Modify one or more of "print", "print_r", "var_export" such that they produce
   a newline by default

2. Modify one or more of "print", "print_r", "var_export" such that they have an
   argument similar to Python "end" that controls what follows the input, if
   anything:

   https://docs.python.org/library/functions.html#print

3. Add a new method, perhaps "echoln", "println", "say" or similar, that outputs
   a newline by default

4. introduce a new variable, perhaps "$OUTPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR", "$ORS", "$\" or
   similar, that controls output record separator

I understand that some of these methods are old and unlikely to change, but if I
do nothing then I have only myself to blame.