PHP string doesn't allow < and> characters

Question

I have a string in my code as per the following example:

\';
?>

Answer 1

you can use the htmlspecialchars function to escape the < brackets..

Answer 2

Use htmlspecialchars()

echo htmlspecialchars('string you want to echo');

Answer 3

With PHP you can generate HTML markup, so you have to find a way to distinguish between HTML element characters ( < & > ). There exist special sequence of characters in HTML that are called HTML entities. Those are described with an ampersand, some sort of shorthand and end with a semi-colon.

Here are some examples:

>     : > (greater-than)
&lt;     : < (less-than)
&amp;    : & (ampersand)
&raquo;  : » (right angle quote marks)
&eacute; : é (e acute)

Almost all characters can be represented with such entities, but it quickly gets tedious. You only have to remember the < and > ones, plus the & for URLs.

Your code should be rewritten like this if your intention was to show the less-than / greater-than signs.

<?php
$find = '&lt;tag';
$string = 'blah blah &lt;tag=something&gt;';
?>

As mentioned in other answers, you can use the function htmlspecialchars() to convert characters in a variable (e.g. from user input).

<?php echo htmlspecialchars($string); ?>

will display blah blah <tag=something> for viewing in a web browser. Else, if you were using PHP on the command line for example, you would not need to use this function.

Answer 4

You need to use HTML characters to avoid it being turned into HTML.

so:

echo htmlspecialchars("<hello>");