Using comments in PHP code is very important and practical. Why is it that these comments help us understand the code better and if later we want to make changes to it, it is easier to follow? Especially when we manage large projects, having comments allows other team members to easily follow and edit the code.
Comments do not affect the performance of the code directly and are ignored by the compiler or interpreter. For this reason, we can place any explanations we need next to the code. There are two types of comments in PHP: single-line comments and multi-line comments.
Single-line comments start with two tokens // or a single token #. Anything that follows these tokens is considered a comment and continues until the end of the same line. For example:
Multi-line comments start with the token /* and end with the token */. This type of comment can span several lines and is suitable for longer explanations.
Code Examples
// this is a single-line comment
# this is another single-line comment
/*
this is a multi-line comment
spanning multiple lines
*/
echo "Hello, World!"; // this is a simple PHP code
Line-by-Line Explanation
// this is a single-line comment A simple comment that appears at the beginning of the line and provides a reference to the following code.
# this is another single-line comment Similar to the previous example but uses a hash symbol.
/* Starts a multi-line comment and
*/ Ends the same multi-line comment. Everything between these two tokens is treated as a comment.
echo "Hello, World!"; This line is a PHP code that outputs a greeting and at the end of it, a single-line comment is added.