The Short Echo Tag in PHP

Using the short echo tag (“<?=”) in PHP was rumored to be deprecated because the short PHP tags (“<?”) were slated to be. Those short open tags were scheduled to be removed due to XML’s opening tags conflicting directly with them. Even though XML’s opening tags conflict with the defunct PHP short open tags, the short echo tag does not!

Therefore, it is perfectly okay to use the short open tags in PHP as long as your code doesn’t need to work below PHP 5.4 – Which shouldn’t be a problem!