Could someone explain the logical process of this expression? confused...

When a variable is declared it is assigned a memory location by the "compiler". That memory location may already hold a value so it's a good idea to "initialize" the variable. In the example you offered we want to make sure we are not concatenating with some junk. So we get rid of the potential junk by saying $email_body = "";. Empty quotes without a space in between them creates an empty string.

I'm a little confused too as to why combining all the variables from the form into a single variable was needed. The instructor explains, "when we send out this email, we're going to need the entire body of the email in a single variable: we can't echo out the variables one at a time like we do on this page." Why is that exactly; is it just good practice as Aaron suggested?

Hi Aaron,

I think the example you've provided is just an exercise in concatenation and string variables. If the complete variable was displayed in an email it would look something like this:

Name: Some Name
Email: some@email
Message: the message

Without the newline character (\n) the display would look like this:

Name: Some NameEmail: some@emailMessage: the message

Hope this clears up some confusion.

Also, if you look just below the text box area you will see something that says Markdown Cheetsheet. Also, there is a post here titled: Posting Code to the Forum by Dave McFarland. If you don't understand that maybe this will make sense: How to display code at Treehouse.

Jeff

Thank you, Jeff.

I'm wondering specifically about this block of code:

$email_body = "";
    $email_body = $email_body 
    $email_body = $email_body 
    $email_body = $email_body 

Are you saying that this is only to provide a space before "Name", "email", and "message"? I can't imagine what else it'd be for....

That code snippet is from the block I posted originally.

$email_body = "";
    $email_body = $email_body . "Name: " . $name . "\n";
    $email_body = $email_body . "Email: " . $email . "\n";
    $email_body = $email_body . "Message: " . $message;

It is from the "Working with Concantenation and Whitespace" lesson. I understand the end result, however I don't understand why $email_body was used if it was assigned an empty string. My assumption is that it provides a blank space.

Some developers do that so you have a set value (here its an empty string) when you instantiate the variable. I'm not a big fan of that method personally, I would just do this instead:

$email_body = "Name: " . $name . "\n";
$email_body .= "Email: " . $email . "\n";
$email_body .= "Message: " . $message;

I think this is cleaner and easier to read for the developer who is working on your project, or a new developer just coming into the project.

OK so it's a 'good practice' kind of thing. Gotcha. Makes a bit more sense. Will probably make more sense as I go through the lessons.

Thanks, guys!