Differences between PHP and ASP.NET

In response to a thread on the ASP.NET Forums I decided to publish the answers in an overview on my blog.

Someone asked what the differences were between PHP and ASP.NET and how he did certain things.

My answers are based on using C# as the language for your ASP.NET application.

1. Is there any difference between ’’ and "" in ASP.NET?

Yes, 'a' is a single char, while "a" is a string.

Something useful about escaping in ASP.NET is the following:

@"bla\bla" == "bla\\bla"

A string with an @ in front of it is seen as a literal, where you don’t have to escape special characters.

2. How would I do something like print $variable.'string'; in ASP.NET?

You would use the following: Response.Write(variable + "string");

But using Response.Write isn’t really recommended, take a look at all the server controls you have, like a Label for example.

3. Within an if language construct, what would be the equivalent of “and” and “or”?

Actually PHP supports the same being used in ASP.NET:

• and → &&
• or → ||

Example:

if (((number == 5) && (number2 != 8)) || (admin == true)) {

      // do stuff

}

Would correspond to: if number is 5 and number2 is not 8, or we’re an admin, do stuff.

4. Would someone be able to tell me how I could make an ASP.NET equivalent of this PHP function?

function num($number){
        return '#' . str_pad($number, 3, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT);
}

You need a function which returns a string, and which formats a string:

public string num(int number) {
      return String.Format("#{0}", number.ToString("000"));
}

5. How do I create a multidimensional array?

Try this:

// 2 dimensional arrays
int [,] a1;
a1 = new int[3,2];
int [,] a2 = {{1,2}, {3,4}, {5,6}};

// jagged arrays
int[][] a3;
a3 = new int[3][];
a3[0] = new int[5]{1, 2, 3, 4 ,5};
a3[1] = new int[3];
a3[2] = new int[4]{21, 22, 23, 24};

Loop over them to see the elements.