Curly braces or colon-endif statements in PHP - which one provides better performance and code compatibility?

Question

I was looking through many snippets of code, and I have found that people can use the following two methods in an if statement:

Method 1:

<?php
  if ($condition) {
    // Do this
  }
?>

Method 2:

<?php
  if ($condition):
    // Do this
  endif;
?>

So which method is more compatible with PHP compilers and versions with PHP, or is there no discernible difference between the two?

Answer 1

Most of the time the alternative (endif) syntax is used in view scripts. It's often hard to see/notice the end of an if statement since a curly brace only takes up one character, when you're at the bottom of a file, it's hard to tell if it's the end of an if or a foreach. For example:

<?php if ($condition): ?>

    <div>a huge block of html</div>

<?php endif; ?>