PHP eats linefeed in php/plaintext mixed mode

Question

This one is bothering me for a while. Let's say we have a simple PHP-File:

Line 0
Line 1
<?="Line 2"?>
Line 3

Processing this file will result in:

Line 0
Line 1
Line 2Line 3

Where did the line feed after ?> go? The linefeed is not beeing devoured when placing some character after the closing tag (e.g. ?>.).

Is there a way to control this behaviour? I'm not willing to place whitespaces after the closing tag, because my IDE is configured to remove whitespaces before linefeeds (and I like it that way).

Answer 1

Yes, indeed:

The closing tag for the block will include the immediately trailing newline if one is present.

http://php.net/manual/en/language.basic-syntax.instruction-separation.php

Meaning, if the ?> is the last thing on the line, the newline will be removed as part of the closing PHP block. You need to explicitly echo a newline or add an additional newline.