Clear echoed items PHP

Question

Can I clear all (already) echoed or printed items? I am NOT searching for output buffering. I am searching for an alternative.

Heres an example:

<?php

echo 'a';
print 'b';

The code I need

echo 'c';

The first two statements (echo and print) should not be present in the output
?>

Answer 1

No, whatever you write out is send on to the webserver, which sends it along to the browser. There is however a module in PHP called output buffering which decouples the output stream (temporarily).

Look into ob_start() and ob_end_clean()

<?PHP

ob_start(); // output buffering enabled

// these echos will be buffered in memory, instead of written out as they usually would:
echo 'A';
echo 'B';
echo 'C';

// now we've moved the buffer into `$html` (so that now contains 'ABC'), and we've stopped output buffering.
$html = ob_get_clean();

echo 'D'; // this is being send to the client/webbrowser as usual

echo $html; // now we print the ABC we intercepted earlier


So the client will receive : D A B C