delete if/else statement in php - php

Question

I am trying to learn PHP, and I am playing around with if loops, just to learn how to use them. I have made 8 variables containing a letter. After this I have made 8 if/else sentences that is writing these letters out.
<?php
$letter1 = 'N';
$letter2 = 'E';
$letter3 = 'K';
$letter4 = 'T';
$letter5 = 'A';
$letter6 = 'R';
$letter7 = 'I';
$letter8 = 'A';
if($letter1 == 'N') {
echo $letter1;
}
else {
echo 'FALSE';
}
if($letter1 == 'N' && $letter2 == 'E') {
echo $letter1.$letter2;
}
else {
echo FALSE;
}
if($letter1 == 'N' && $letter2 == 'E' && $letter3 == 'K') {
echo $letter1.$letter2.$letter3;
}
else {
echo FALSE;
}
if($letter1 == 'N' && $letter2 == 'E' && $letter3 == 'K' && $letter4 == 'T') {
echo $letter1.$letter2.$letter3.$letter4;
}
else {
echo FALSE;
}
if($letter1 == 'N' && $letter2 == 'E' && $letter3 == 'K' && $letter4 == 'T' && $letter5 == 'A') {
echo $letter1.$letter2.$letter3.$letter4.$letter5;
}
else {
echo FALSE;
}
if($letter1 == 'N' && $letter2 == 'E' && $letter3 == 'K' && $letter4 == 'T' && $letter5 == 'A' && $letter6 == 'R') {
echo $letter1.$letter2.$letter3.$letter4.$letter5.$letter6;
}
else {
echo FALSE;
}
if($letter1 == 'N' && $letter2 == 'E' && $letter3 == 'K' && $letter4 == 'T' && $letter5 == 'A' && $letter6 == 'R' && $letter7 == 'I') {
echo $letter1.$letter2.$letter3.$letter4.$letter5.$letter6.$letter7;
}
else {
echo FALSE;
}
if($letter1 == 'N' && $letter2 == 'E' && $letter3 == 'K' && $letter4 == 'T' && $letter5 == 'A' && $letter6 == 'R' && $letter7 == 'I' && $letter8 == 'A') {
echo $letter1.$letter2.$letter3.$letter4.$letter5.$letter6.$letter7.$letter8;
}
else {
echo FALSE;
}
?>
So the output of this is:
NNENEKNEKTNEKTANEKTARNEKTARINEKTARIA
I have to questions I hope you can help me with.
1: If I want the output to be:
N
NE
NEK
NEKT etc etc. How do I make the space between then lines. Fx like html
2: can I do anything to ignore my if/else statements afterwords? Fx if I only wants to write out "Nektaria" and not N, NE, NEK, NEKT etc. I could of course just delete them, but it is just to make some small assignments for myself.
Best Regards
Mads

Answer 1

To answer your first question about spaces, then you would have to add those in your echo
example:
echo $letter1.$letter2. ' ';
For you second question, you could use switch and sort of make a menu with numbers. Example if 4 was pressed then print out whatever letters.
<?php
switch ($i) {
case 0:
echo "i equals 0";
break;
case 1:
echo "i equals 1";
break;
case 2:
echo "i equals 2";
break;
default:
echo "i is not equal to 0, 1 or 2";
}
?>
http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.switch.php

Answer 2

From this answer
PHP (typically) generates HTML output for a web-site.
When displaying HTML, the browser (typically) collapses all whitespace in text into a single space. Sometimes, between tags, it even collapses whitespace to nothing.
So you would just want to add a <br/> at the end of your echo statements like so:
echo $letter1.$letter2.$letter3.'<br/>'; //And so on for all the other echo statements
Now to answer the second part of your question, the if-else statements get executed sequentially. That is the whole reason why you see the output in that order. If you want to check for all the letters first (which outputs "NEKTARIA"), you'll just have to perform that check first and re-order your if-else statements. To ignore the if-else statements, you could use a simple $FLAG variable and set it to TRUE or FALSE depending on if it has performed the first check or not. So once you have performed the check you need, just do:
$FLAG = true;
And in all the if-else statements just check if $FLAG == false and only then proceed.
The switch statement as many have already pointed out, resolves these two issues directly and allows you to encapsulate multiple conditions and selectively check them.
switch (n) {
case label1:
code to be executed if n=label1;
break;
case label2:
code to be executed if n=label2;
break;
case label3:
code to be executed if n=label3;
break;
...
default:
code to be executed if n is different from all labels;
}
The code is pretty intuitive and self explanatory. Here is the link of the official W3 Schools tutorial on it which could be a great starting point for you. Hope this gets you started in the right direction.

Answer 3

1) For making your output like this: N NE NEK NEKT
Make this change in the echo statement :
echo $letter1." ";
echo $letter1$letter2.$letter3." ";
and so on for printing a space between two variables all you need to do is add this part after the variable you want to have a space: ." "
2) And for making your out put like this: Nektaria
don't echo out multiple variables in each and every if else statement. just one variable in each if-else loop.