[phpGroupWare-developers] Closing PHP tag

[Dave Hall]

Hi all,

I have updated the coding standard to include a new requirement to not
include a closing PHP tag (?>) in script files.

The main reasons for this are:
1 It isn't needed, ?> is only needed when switching out of PHP mode

2 It can introduce whitespace which will introduce output, which may not
be desired

3 Many other projects are taking this approach

Projects which have dropped the closing ?>

 * Zend Framework - 
http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/coding-standard.php-file-formatting.html#coding-standard.php-file-formatting.general
 * Drupal - http://drupal.org/coding-standards
 * dokuwiki - http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:development#php_closing_tags
 * Joomla - http://docs.joomla.org/Coding_style_and_standards#PHP_Code_Tags
 * postNuke - http://community.postnuke.com/Wiki-CodingStandards.htm 

Those which are silent or against it
 * PEAR (silent) - http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.tags.php
 * MediaWiki (silent) - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Coding_conventions
 * phpBB (silent) - http://area51.phpbb.com/docs/coding-guidelines.html
 * Gallery2 - http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Coding_Standards#PHP_Code_Tags
 * WordPress - http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Coding_Standards

The PHP manual even recommends dropping them, see
http://php.net/basic-syntax.instruction-separation

I am sure google could have turned up more for either side, but these
were the first 10 FOSS PHP projects that sprang to mind.

As a side note, it looks like most projects are using the PEAR
convention these days.  I personally like the ZF standard, but that is
what I am used to.

I have been dropping them when I am working on a file for some time.  If
there is serious objections I will roll back the changes to the
standard.

 </another_religious_debate>

Cheers

Dave
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