; on the end of the line

Hello, dear coders.
I'm using php for a year and it's being my favourite language. Also I'm
using some bookkeping languages which is based on php syntax but ';' on the
end of the line is not neccesary on it.
So I can't understand why syntax needs symbol ';' on the end of every line,
if it also ends by 0Ch and 0Dh. Is there a possibility to interpretate php
code without ';' on the end of the line, and make it not necessary?

Maybe some compilation parameter or directive at code?

Best regards,
Dmitry

Hello, dear coders.
I'm using php for a year and it's being my favourite language. Also I'm
using some bookkeping languages which is based on php syntax but ';' on the
end of the line is not neccesary on it.
So I can't understand why syntax needs symbol ';' on the end of every line,
if it also ends by 0Ch and 0Dh. Is there a possibility to interpretate php
code without ';' on the end of the line, and make it not necessary?

Maybe some compilation parameter or directive at code?

Best regards,
Dmitry

Dmitry,

It is not necessary to end each line with a semicolon (the ';'), it is
however necessary to terminate each statement (or instruction) with one.
It's very common to only have one statement per line; which is why is seems
that it is required on every line.

There are several places this is not the case:

• Any block opening/close: e.g.

if/while/for/foreach ... {
// or it's close, or a comment for that matter!
}

• An unfinished statement:

echo $foo .
$bar // concat (.) operator can be here, as above, or on the next
line:
. $baz; // only semicolon here, to finish the statement

• Preceding a closing PHP tag (?>) as this also terminates a statement:

echo $foo ?>
<?php
// or
echo $bar
?>

Alternatively, you may have MORE than one statement per line:

• echo $foo; return $bar;

• syslog(LOG_ERR, "Something went wrong!"); exit;

• header("Location: /foo/bar"); exit;

Notice each of these has two statements. (Note: I don't think any of these
are particularly good ways to write readable code, but they are all
syntactically valid code).

While I know some languages make semicolons optional (javascript), or omit
them entirely (python), semicolons in PHP will not be going away (or
optional) any time soon.

Even a language like Go where they are optional, and largely discouraged,
it can be used to explicitly allow the initialization of a local (only
exists in the scope of the if statement) variable prior to the condition:

if err := DoSomething(); err != nil {
// initialization before ; condition {
return err // no semicolon necessary
}

I hope this helps!

• Davey