Having trouble with echoing HTML in php script - php

Question

I am trying to make a form that show users name and I am having a little trouble with this part. The ' ' and " " marks dont quite work how they are supposed to. Im trying to echo the options in drop down menu and some how the $wholenames and the last " sign appear in the wrong part of the page. Could someone please tell me what is the correct way of doing this?
Thanks
echo' "<option>'; echo $wholenames; echo'</option>"';
Actually I had looked it wrong it is a little bit more complex. Below you can see the code. The whole dropdown menu does not appear. The wholenames integer appears, but the menu does not...
echo'
<label for="addusertogroup">Add user to an existing group:</label>
<select name="addusertogroup" id="addusertogroup">
'; if(mysql_num_rows($userresult))
{
while($row2 = mysql_fetch_assoc($userresult))
{
$wholename = array("$row2[f_name] $row2[s_name]");
foreach ($wholename as $wholenames) {
echo "<option>$wholenames</option>";
}
}
}
else {
echo "<option>No Names Present</option>";
}

Answer 1

To make it work, simply do this:
echo "<option>";
echo $wholenames;
echo "<option>";
or this:
echo "<option>$wholenames</option>";
or this:
echo '<option>'.$wholenames.'</option>';
All will work, just up to you which one you pick.

Answer 2

You shouldn't have " before <option> and after </option>
It should be something like
echo "<option>". echo $wholenames; echo "</option>";
Also, if $wholenames is an array, you'd better iterate over it:
foreach ($wholenames as $name){
echo "<option>". echo $name; echo "</option>";
}

Answer 3

Any text for options in a HTML SELECT box are written inside the tag. If you don't put your text between the <option> tags the browser will try to insert it to the select box's DOM.
So you could change your code to this:
echo '<option value="myvalue">"' . $wholenames . '"</option>';
Haven't actually tested this code.
Update if the Quotation mark was not meant to be in the output you would simply need to write:
echo '<option value="myvalue">' . $wholenames . '</option>';
In php you can use both " " and ' ' with strings.