如何在PHP的if / or语句中使用“变量”有条件地生成一条语句？

Question

I have zero experience with PHP. I run a wordpress site, and am trying to make one simple modification to the code. This is what I have:

    <?php
    if(<?php the_author() ?> == "Joe Man")
    {
    <?php the_author() ?>
    }
    ?>

I believe all variables start with a $, so what I have above in my if statement is not a variable. What do I do? I also tried creating a variable, as below:

    <?php
    $author = <?php the_author() ?>
    if($author == "Joe Man")
    {
    <?php the_author() ?>
    }
    ?>

Neither of the above worked. So my question is how can I get that if statement to evaluate? What I need is if the_author is "Joe Man", for the string "Joe Man" to display on my page.

This is the error I get btw:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '<'

Thanks!

Answer 1

You may not nest <?php ?> tags. The correct code would be:

<?php
    $author = get_the_author();
    if ($author == "Joe Man") {
        echo $author;
    }
?>

Actually, the variable could be skipped altogether, shortening the code to:

<?php
    if (get_the_author() == "Joe Man") {
        the_author();
    }
?>

Note the echo to print out the author.

Answer 2

Looks like you're using wordpress, so beyond your PHP-in-PHP error, your code wouldn't work anyways, as both the_author() calls will simply OUTPUT the data, instead of returning it for comparison. You'd want:

$author = get_the_author();
if ($author == "Joe Man") {
   echo $author;
}

instead. As a general rule, any function in Wordpress which does output has a get_...() variant which returns instead of outputting.

Answer 3

If the author is "Joe Man", output the author:

<?php
  $author = the_author();
  if($author == "Joe Man") {
    echo $author;
  }
?>