In PHP, why does [removed] not show a parse error?

Question

I was running the following PHP code:

?>

There were no parse errors and the output was \"

Answer 1

This must be because there are various ways of starting a block of PHP code:

• (known as short_open_tag)

• (the standard really)

• (not recommended)

• <% ... %> (deprecated and removed ASP-style tag after 5.3.0)

Apparently, you can open a PHP block one way, and close it the other. Didn't know that.

So in your code, you opened the block using but PHP recognizes as the closer. What happened was:

   <----- END PHP
?>          <----- JUST GARBAGE IN THE HTML