In PHP: If I start a new line while writing a string in my source is it necessary to concatenate the string?
<p>I'm learning PHP and MySQL together from <em>Head First PHP &amp; MySQL</em> and in the book, they often split their long strings (over 80~ characters) and concatenate them, like this:</p>

<pre><code>$variable = "a very long string " .
    "that requires a new line " .
    "and apparently needs to be concatenated.";
</code></pre>

<p>I have no issue with this, but what strikes me odd is that whitespace in other languages usually don't need concatenation.</p>

<pre><code>$variable = "you guys probably already know
    that this simply works too.";
</code></pre>

<p>I tried this and it worked just fine. Aren't line breaks always interpreted with a space at the end? Even the <a href="http://php.net/manual/en/function.echo.php" rel="nofollow">PHP manual</a> doesn't concatenate in the echo examples if they span over one line.</p>

<p>Should I follow my book's example or what? I can't tell which is more correct or "proper" since both work and the manual even takes a shorter approach. I also would like to know how important is it to keep code under 80 characters in width? I have always been fine with word warp since my monitor is pretty large and I hate my code getting cut short when I have the screen space.</p>
