short tags and other php coding things

i like php’s short tags. i feel sad for people who feel they need to use the ‘<?php’ construct all the time. or worse, ‘<?php echo’ where a ‘<?=’ will do.

one part of my always-evolving personal php coding style is how i embed sql statements into my code. i used to generally do it like:

  $query = "SELECT id,name,url,rss,md5sum,method,updated AS up,"
         . "       UNIX_TIMESTAMP(lastchecked) AS lastchecked,"
         . "       UNIX_TIMESTAMP(updated) AS updated"
         . "  FROM blogs "
         . " WHERE updated > NOW() - INTERVAL 10 MINUTE AND method = 0"
         . " ORDER BY up DESC"
         . " LIMIT 10";

but lately i’ve been doing:

  $query= "SELECT id,name,url,rss,md5sum,method,updated AS up,
                  UNIX_TIMESTAMP(lastchecked) AS lastchecked,
                  UNIX_TIMESTAMP(updated) AS updated
             FROM blogs
            WHERE updated > NOW() - INTERVAL 10 MINUTE AND method = 0
            ORDER BY up DESC
            LIMIT 10
          ";

it makes it easier to cut-and-paste into the mysql client for testing.