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![Josh Lee](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1844d9936e58c4674a5b70dac26c3396?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fecs-static.teamtreehouse.com%2Fassets%2Fcontent%2Fdefault_avatar-445fbbabfc8dc9188fb5967fe43322ee0c3e0dd1e10f378bf8343784af5a13eb.webp&r=pg)
Josh Lee
5,270 PointsWhy can't I use echo when adding a method to return a string?
This code challenge asked my to return a string that contained some variables about the object. I tried using echo and that didn't work. Instead, I had to use return. If the method is returning a string why isn't it ok to use echo? Is echo only ok to use when you specifically want to output HTML?
1 Answer
![Ryan Field](https://uploads.teamtreehouse.com/production/profile-photos/2892162/micro_ryan3.jpg)
Ryan Field
Courses Plus Student 21,242 PointsI'm no PHP pro, but I believe that, yes, echoing is usually used for outputting HTML to the page. It can be used for things like echoing objects back to jQuery when using AJAX, though, so there are other uses. They may seem similar, but they have different uses; echoing outputs text, while returning passes along information that can be further processed before being output or sent to a database, etc.