How to Insert a Percent Symbol Beside a PHP String

Strings are chunks of text that you can save to variables and perform operations on when programming in languages such as PHP. In a PHP script, you can use a variable as a name that holds the text. Since you will typically reuse a string multiple times in a script, you do not always want to save symbols such as percent signs to the strings. The best way to output a percent symbol with a string is to instead add the symbol onto the string when it is output. This addition of extra text and other variables is called "concatenation."

Instructions

1. Open your PHP file in Notepad or a code editor. Find the line where you output the string:

   echo $my_string;

2. Add a dot between the variable name and the semicolon:

   echo $my_string . ;

   The dot will concatenate more text to a string, thereby changing the output of the "echo" statement.

3. Add your percent symbol between quotation marks after the dot. Use the HTML special character code for the percent symbol. Place a space in front of the character code to keep the percent symbol from bumping up against the text of the string:

   echo $my_string . ' &37;';

   When "my_string" is equal to "five," the output of the above "echo" statement is "Five %."