else

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

Often you'd want to execute a statement if a certain condition is met, and a different statement if the condition is not met. This is what else is for. else extends an if statement to execute a statement in case the expression in the if statement evaluates to FALSE. For example, the following code would display a is greater than b if $a is greater than $b, and a is NOT greater than b otherwise:

<?php
if ($a $b) {
  echo 
"a is greater than b";
} else {
  echo 
"a is NOT greater than b";
}
?>
The else statement is only executed if the if expression evaluated to FALSE, and if there were any elseif expressions - only if they evaluated to FALSE as well (see elseif).