[PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8]
elseif
, as its name suggests, is a combination of if
and else
. Like else
, it extends an if
statement to execute a different statement in case the original if
expression evaluates to false
. However, unlike else
, it will execute that alternative expression only if the elseif
conditional expression evaluates to true
. For example,
the following code would display a is bigger than b, a equal to b or a is smaller than b:
There may be several elseif
s within the same if
statement. The first elseif
expression [if any] that evaluates to true
would be executed. In PHP, you can also write 'else if' [in two words] and the behavior would be identical to the one of 'elseif' [in a single word]. The syntactic meaning is slightly
different [if you're familiar with C, this is the same behavior] but the bottom line is that both would result in exactly the same behavior.
The elseif
statement is only executed if the preceding if
expression and any preceding elseif
expressions evaluated to false
, and the current elseif
expression evaluated to true
.
Note: Note that
elseif
andelse if
will only be considered exactly the same when using curly brackets as in the above example. When using a colon to define yourif
/elseif
conditions, you must not separateelse if
into two words, or PHP will fail with a parse error.
Vladimir Kornea ¶
15 years ago
The parser doesn't handle mixing alternative if syntaxes as reasonably as possible.
The following is illegal [as it should be]:
This is also illegal [as it should be]:
But since the two alternative if syntaxes are not interchangeable, it's reasonable to expect that the parser wouldn't try matching else statements using one style to if statement using the alternative style. In other words, one would expect that this would work:
Instead of concluding that the else statement was intended to match the if[$b] statement [and erroring out], the parser could match the else statement to the if[$a] statement, which shares its syntax.
While it's understandable that the PHP developers don't consider this a bug, or don't consider it a bug worth their time, jsimlo was right to point out that mixing alternative if syntaxes might lead to unexpected results.
mparsa1372 at gmail dot com ¶
1 year ago
The if...elseif...else statement executes different codes for more than two conditions.
Syntax:
if [condition] {
code to be executed if this condition is true;
} elseif [condition] {
code to be executed if first condition is false and this condition is true;
} else {
code to be executed if all conditions are false;
}
Example:
Output "Have a good morning!" if the current time is less than 10, and "Have a good day!" if the current time is less than 20. Otherwise it will output "Have a good night!":
qualitycoder ¶
7 years ago
The reason 'else if' [with a space] works with traditional syntax and not colon syntax is because of a technicality.
In this instance, the 'else if' is a shorthand/inline else statement [no curly braces] with the if statement as a body. It is the same things as:
If you were to write this with colon syntax, it would be: