Is there a difference between '<?=' and '<?php'? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Are PHP short tags acceptable to use?

I was looking at some sample code and I noticed that the code used

<?=

instead of

<?php

as opening tags, the closing tags were the same as usual, but I was just wondering if there is any different functionality between the two? The file extension of the sample code is also .phtml instead of .php

Answer 1

<?= is not the same as <?php

<?= is the same as <?php echo

<? is the same as <?php

Answer 2

<?= is shorthand for <?php echo ...

It's used like so:

<?=$var1?>

instead of:

<?php echo $var1; ?>