PHP If / Else Statements Without Brackets

Question

Is the following always acceptable code? It seems to work, but does it consistently work with all versions of PHP?

if ($x > $y)
    echo 'x is greater';
elseif ($x == $y)
    echo 'equal';
else
    echo 'y is greater';

Thanks.

Answer 1

That is acceptable across version and will work for as long as you want to do only one thing within each control block. Using brackets does help to make it easier to track where blocks start and end, as well as future proofing for when you need to add just one more statement.

This post has a good summary of the various options for if/else blocks in PHP.

Answer 2

That works fine, and it's a common way of doing fast if's in many languages. As stated before - if you use more than one line of code you need to put it in a block with bracket.

For example here:

if (x == 1)
 echo "x is one";
 echo "one is x";

The result will be that "x is one" will be echoed if x == 1 while "one is x" will be echoed every time - no matter if x==1 or not.

To get both lines of code to execute only when the condition is true you need to enclose it in a block.

if (x == 1)
{
 echo "x is one";
 echo "one is x";
}