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Comment by scragg | Hacker News Reader

Why not just leave the "{{ }}" out and assume the mammouth file is 100% PHP?

Probably because then you'd have to have a templating language implemented in a templating language in order to render templates.

Welcome to the PHP ecosystem.

At the very least it'd make more sense to invert the expectation. {{<html>}} instead of {{php}}html{{php}}.

The way around php has it is both annoying, since most php is not mere template anymore, and error-prone, thanks to the potential problems from trailing whitespace.

> thanks to the potential problems from trailing whitespace.

You are supposed to leave out the closing ?> in the PHP file - then you don't have that problem.

Inverting doesn't really make any sense:

    <P><?=$message?></P>

The HTML is primary, the PHP is used to output whatever is needed.

I'm aware you're supposed to leave out the closing ?>, but a lot of people don't. In fact, the example on the front page of this project doesn't leave out the trailing }}, either, incidentally.

As for your little snippet, inverting does make sense:

    <?php
      // ... 1000 lines of php
              ...?><p><?=$message?></p><?...
      // ... 1000 lines of php
    ?>

But tacky little examples aside, there's nothing stopping <?= tags from working just as they always have once you've escaped into html.

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