elseif, as its name suggests,
is a combination of if and else. Like
else, it extends an if
statement to execute a different statement in case the
original if expression evaluates to
FALSE. However, unlike else, it will execute that alternative
expression only if the elseif
conditional expression evaluates to
TRUE. For example, the following code would display
a is bigger than b, a equal to b or a is smaller than b:
if ($a $b) { print "a is bigger than b"; } elseif ($a == $b) { print "a is equal to b"; } else { print "a is smaller than b"; } |
There may be several elseifs
within the same if statement. The
first elseif expression (if any)
that evaluates to TRUE would
be executed. In PHP, you can also write 'else if' (in two
words) and the behavior would be identical to the one of
'elseif' (in a single word). The syntactic meaning is
slightly different (if you're familiar with C, this is the
same behavior) but the bottom line is that both would result
in exactly the same behavior.
The elseif statement is only
executed if the preceding if
expression and any preceding elseif
expressions evaluated to
FALSE, and the current
elseif expression evaluated to
TRUE.