Format question: why is fetch_template surrounded with single quote+period?

[raztrip]

First, thank you all for replying. I've read the guide on single and double quotes, and understood it, including the concatenation examples.

Now, if we take just this part:
$navbar = "' . fetch_template('navbar') . '";

I fail to understand why it isn't written as:
$navbar .= "fetch_template('navbar')";

Also, seeing as how PHP would recognize a function inside quotes as a string (I'm talking about 'fetch_template...'), does eval overcome this by treating everything to the right of it as possible PHP code?

Thank you,

R

Originally Posted by Dismounted

Because you can't. There isn't a "=" anywhere, so you can't use a ".=".