This is actually a pretty common question.
Taken straight from the Zend Coding Standards (draft) seen at:
http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ZFDEV/PHP+Coding+Standard+(draft)
"For files that contain only PHP code, the closing tag ("?>") is to be omitted.
It is not required by PHP, and omitting it prevents trailing whitespace from
being accidentally injected into the output."
Generally, as such, it's a good idea to omit the closing tag in PHP files
containing only PHP code (such as class files). For things like views, which
are mixes of PHP and HTML, close all PHP.
This will prevent you from encountering trailing whitespace, which can be a bit
of a headache.
On Sat, 11 Aug 2007 20:58:18 -0700, Stanislav Malyshev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>> After going through the docs I realized that the examples with no end ?>
>> was not a typo. Is that for every php script that uses in the framework
> or
>> just the framework classes? Will something bad happen if you do use '?>'
>> ? How did that design decision come about?
>
> Nothing bad happens if you use "?>". However, if you use "?>" and after
> it put some whitespace, something bad does happen - this whitespace gets
> output, and it might be output in wrong place at the wrong time. Since
> closing ?> is not required and anyway nothing is going to happen after
> ?>, many people omit it.
> --
> Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.zend.com/
> (408)253-8829 MSN: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
