你知道PHP的另一种语法吗，我孤陋寡闻了

最近在玩wordpress，发现其主题中的模板文件中经常出现一些带有冒号的“怪”语法。第一感觉这是 wordpress 本身定义的，类似于smarty这样的标签语法，从而需要先将其翻译成纯PHP代码，然后才能执行。很快发现我的想法是错误的！这种特殊语法与WordPress无关，而是PHP语言本身的特性！而且PHP手册中就有说明，只是本人孤陋寡闻了，实在是惭愧。今天把官文说明记录到这里，以备后用。

（1）基本规则，用:代替开始的{  ，用endif;等代替关闭的}。

（2）注意：这种替代语法不能和常规语法混用。

（3）这种替代语法的唯一目的是为了把PHP嵌入到html中时，使得代码整洁明了。

PHP offers an alternative syntax for some of its control structures; namely, if, while, for, foreach, and switch. In each case, the basic form of the alternate syntax is to change the opening brace to a colon (:) and the closing brace to endif;, endwhile;, endfor;, endforeach;, or endswitch;, respectively. 




<?php if ($a == 5): ?>
A is equal to 5
<?php endif; ?>  


In the above example, the HTML block "A is equal to 5" is nested within an if statement written in the alternative syntax. The HTML block would be displayed only if $a is equal to 5. 

The alternative syntax applies to else and elseif as well. The following is an if structure with elseif and else in the alternative format: 




<?php
if ($a == 5):
    echo "a equals 5";
    echo "...";
elseif ($a == 6):
    echo "a equals 6";
    echo "!!!";
else:
    echo "a is neither 5 nor 6";
endif;
?>  



Note: 

Mixing syntaxes in the same control block is not supported. 


Warning 
Any output (including whitespace) between a switch statement and the first case will result in a syntax error. For example, this is invalid: 




<?php switch ($foo): ?>
    <?php case 1: ?>
    ...
<?php endswitch ?>  

Whereas this is valid, as the trailing newline after the switch statement is considered part of the closing ?> and hence nothing is output between the switch and case: 




<?php switch ($foo): ?>
<?php case 1: ?>
    ...
<?php endswitch ?>