PHP RFC: Remove alternative PHP tags

• Date: 2014-09-09
• Author: Nikita Popov nikic@php.net
• Status: Under Discussion
• Targeting: PHP 7
• Patch: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/813

This RFC proposes the removal of ASP tags (<%) and script tags <script language=php>) as a means of entering or leaving PHP mode.

The following syntactical elements are removed:

• <% opening tag
• <%= short opening tag
• %> closing tag
• (<script\s+language\s*=\s*(php|"php"|'php')\s*>)i opening tag
• (</script>)i closing tag

The listed opening tags will no longer enter PHP mode and the listed closing tags will no longer leave PHP mode.

Additionally the asp_tags ini directive is removed.

• The alternative PHP tags have never gained any significant degree of usage. Their usage has been discouraged since forever.
• The ASP tags depend on an ini directive and as such are non-portable. We generally try to move away from ini-dependent language behavior. With ASP tags removed, short open tags should be the last.
• ASP tags clash with underscore.js templates and it's not possible to disable asp tags using ini_set().
• Supporting different tags allows very weird mixing like <script language=php> echo "foo" %>

As this is a language change a 2/3 majority is required.