PHP Syntax
PHP is a language that was designed to be easily embedded into HTML pages (although you don't have to do it that way). Most PHP pages have PHP code and HTML intermixed. When a Web server reads a PHP page, it is looking for two things to let it know it should start reading the page as PHP rather than HTML, the start and end PHP tags: <?php and ?>, respectively.
If you have configured your php.ini file to accept “short tags” (which are enabled by default), then you can use the syntax <? and ?> instead. Additionally, you can configure your php.ini file so that it accepts ASP style tags, <% and %>. This feature is turned off by default, and its only real purpose seems to be to allow certain HTML editors to recognize the in-between code ...
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