(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
Often you'd want to execute a statement if a certain condition is
met, and a different statement if the condition is not met. This
is what else is for. else
extends an if statement to execute a statement
in case the expression in the if statement
evaluates to false. For example, the following
code would display a is greater than
b if $a is greater than
$b, and a is NOT greater
than b otherwise:
<?php
if ($a > $b) {
echo "a is greater than b";
} else {
echo "a is NOT greater than b";
}
?>else statement is only executed if the
if expression evaluated to
false, and if there were any
elseif expressions - only if they evaluated to
false as well (see elseif).
Nota: Dangling else
In case of nested
if-elsestatements, anelseis always associated with the nearestif.Despite the indentation (which does not matter for PHP), the<?php
$a = false;
$b = true;
if ($a)
if ($b)
echo "b";
else
echo "c";
?>elseis associated with theif ($b), so the example does not produce any output. While relying on this behavior is valid, it is recommended to avoid it by using curly braces to resolve potential ambiguities.
An alternative and very useful syntax is the following one:
statement ? execute if true : execute if false
Ths is very usefull for dynamic outout inside strings, for example:
print('$a is ' . ($a > $b ? 'bigger than' : ($a == $b ? 'equal to' : 'smaler than' )) . ' $b');
This will print "$a is smaler than $b" is $b is bigger than $a, "$a is bigger than $b" if $a si bigger and "$a is equal to $b" if they are same.If you're coming from another language that does not have the "elseif" construct (e.g. C++), it's important to recognise that "else if" is a nested language construct and "elseif" is a linear language construct; they may be compared in performance to a recursive loop as opposed to an iterative loop.
<?php
$limit=1000;
for($idx=0;$idx<$limit;$idx++)
{ $list[]="if(false) echo \"$idx;\n\"; else"; }
$list[]=" echo \"$idx\n\";";
$space=implode(" ",$list);| // if ... else if ... else
$nospace=implode("",$list); // if ... elseif ... else
$start=array_sum(explode(" ",microtime()));
eval($space);
$end=array_sum(explode(" ",microtime()));
echo $end-$start . " seconds\n";
$start=array_sum(explode(" ",microtime()));
eval($nospace);
$end=array_sum(explode(" ",microtime()));
echo $end-$start . " seconds\n";
?>
This test should show that "elseif" executes in roughly two-thirds the time of "else if". (Increasing $limit will also eventually cause a parser stack overflow error, but the level where this happens is ridiculous in real world terms. Nobody normally nests if() blocks to more than a thousand levels unless they're trying to break things, which is a whole different problem.)
There is still a need for "else if", as you may have additional code to be executed unconditionally at some rung of the ladder; an "else if" construction allows this unconditional code to be elegantly inserted before or after the entire rest of the process. Consider the following elseif() ladder:
<?php
if($a) { conditional1(); }
elseif($b) { conditional2(); }
elseif($c) { conditional3(); }
elseif($d) { conditional4(); }
elseif($e) { conditional5(); }
elseif($f) { conditional6(); }
elseif($g) { conditional7(); }
elseif($h) { conditional8(); }
else { conditional9(); }
?>
To insert unconditional preprocessing code for $e onward, one need only split the "elseif":
<?php
if($a) { conditional1(); }
elseif($b) { conditional2(); }
elseif($c) { conditional3(); }
elseif($d) { conditional4(); }
else {
....unconditional();
....if($e) { conditional5(); }
....elseif($f) { conditional6(); }
....elseif($g) { conditional7(); }
....elseif($h) { conditional8(); }
....else { conditional9(); }
}
?>
The alternative is to duplicate the unconditional code throughout the construct.