What does <<< in PHP do and where can I find documentation?
March 4th, 2010 | 
Author: I need to know that <<< does in PHP. I’ve searched the internet and found nothing. Please don’t tell me to go to php.net as I have searched there as well. I’ve seen this command used in a couple of programs, but can’t find what it does. Based on the code, it seems like it can move strings into variables.
Thanks for your help.
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This is called "heredoc". It’s used to delimit a string you wish to use as output (for example, some HTML for a page).
It’s explained here:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php
Another newcomer to PHP4 is a new syntax that is modeled after Perl’s "here printing." It is possible to display complete portions of HTML code by flanking them with either a print or echo instruction and an end label. Unlike Perl, the operator used is not a double less than sign (<<), but a triple less than sign (<<<) so as to distinguish it from the binary shift operator.
Hi,
I think that its similar to unix shell script in that it means take the next lines as standard input until you hit the specific tag
for example
echo <<<EOH
——— ——— — ———
result value op test
——— ——— — ———
EOH;
would actually print out
——— ——— — ———
result value op test
——— ——— — ———
hope this helps
Graham
It’s used with an identifying name and echo to print out multiple lines of text without having to escape or terminate the line for instance:
echo <<< TEST
<body>
<p>Hi, I don’t have to do anything special with these lines</p>
<img src="http://www.somesite.com/someimage.jpg"/>
</body>
TEST;
Notice that whatever name you use (I used TEST, but you can use anything), you have to finish up the block with that name again, and with the semicolon.