Regarding earlier note by @purkrt :

> I would like to stress out that the opening tag is "<?php[whitespace]", not just "<?php"

This is absolutely correct, but the wording may confuse some developers less familiar with the extent of the term "[whitespace]".

Whitespace, in this context, would be any character that generated vertical or horizontal space, including tabs ( \t ), newlines ( \n ), and carriage returns ( \r ), as well as a space character ( \s ). So reusing purkrt's example:

<?php/*blah*/ echo "a"?> 

would not work, as mentioned, but :

<?php /*php followed by space*/ echo "a"?>

will work, as well as :

<?php
/*php followed by end-of-line*/ echo "a"?>

and :

<?php    /*php followed by tab*/ echo "a"?>

I just wanted to clarify this to prevent anyone from misreading purkrt's note to mean that a the opening tag --even when being on its own line--required a space ( \s ) character. The following would work but is not at all necessary or how the earlier comment should be interpreted :

<?php 
/*php followed by a space and end-of-line*/ echo "a"?>

The end-of-line character is whitespace, so it is all that you would need.

<?php
$foo = "1";  // $foo is string (ASCII 49)
$foo *= 2;   // $foo is now an integer (2)
$foo = $foo * 1.3;  // $foo is now a float (2.6)
$foo = 5 * "10 Little Piggies"; // $foo is integer (50)
$foo = 5 * "10 Small Pigs";     // $foo is integer (50)
?>

<?php
$a = 1; /* global scope */ 

function test()
{ 
    echo $a; /* reference to local scope variable */ 
} 

test();
?>

<p>This is going to be ignored by PHP and displayed by the browser.</p>
<?php echo 'While this is going to be parsed.'; ?>
<p>This will also be ignored by PHP and displayed by the browser.</p>

"<script language="php"> </script>, are always available." since PHP 7.0.0 is no longer true. These are removed along the ASP "<%, %>, <%=" tags.

One aspect of PHP that you need to be careful of, is that ?> will drop you out of PHP code and into HTML even if it appears inside a // comment. (This does not apply to /* */ comments.) This can lead to unexpected results. For example, take this line:

<?php
  $file_contents  = '<?php die(); ?>' . "\n";
?>

If you try to remove it by turning it into a comment, you get this:

<?php
//  $file_contents  = '<?php die(); ?>' . "\n";
?>

Which results in ' . "\n"; (and whatever is in the lines following it) to be output to your HTML page.

The cure is to either comment it out using /* */ tags, or re-write the line as:

<?php
  $file_contents  = '<' . '?php die(); ?' . '>' . "\n";
?>

Notes can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They vary, and their uses are completely up to the person writing the code. However, I try to keep things consistent in my code that way it's easy for the next person to read. So something like this might help...

<?php

//======================================================================
// CATEGORY LARGE FONT
//======================================================================

//-----------------------------------------------------
// Sub-Category Smaller Font
//-----------------------------------------------------

/* Title Here Notice the First Letters are Capitalized */

# Option 1
# Option 2
# Option 3

/*
 * This is a detailed explanation
 * of something that should require
 * several paragraphs of information.
 */
 
// This is a single line quote.
?>

Comments do NOT take up processing power.

So, for all the people who argue that comments are undesired because they take up processing power now have no reason to comment ;)

<?php

// Control
echo microtime(), "<br />"; // 0.25163600 1292450508
echo microtime(), "<br />"; // 0.25186000 1292450508

// Test
echo microtime(), "<br />"; // 0.25189700 1292450508
# TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST
# .. Above comment repeated 18809 times ..
echo microtime(), "<br />"; // 0.25192100 1292450508

?>

They take up about the same amount of time (about meaning on a repeated testing, sometimes the difference between the control and the test was negative and sometimes positive).

Comments in PHP can be used for several purposes, a very interesting one being that you can generate API documentation directly from them by using PHPDocumentor (http://www.phpdoc.org/).

Therefor one has to use a JavaDoc-like comment syntax (conforms to the DocBook DTD), example:
<?php
/**
* The second * here opens the DocBook commentblock, which could later on<br>
* in your development cycle save you a lot of time by preventing you having to rewrite<br>
* major documentation parts to generate some usable form of documentation.
*/
?>
Some basic html-like formatting is supported with this (ie <br> tags) to create something of a layout.