# Ignored white space

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/ignored-white-space/233754>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [July 26, 2007, 4:12pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/ignored-white-space/233754 "2007-07-26T16:12:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![metafiction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a698b9/32.png) [@metafiction](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/metafiction)\
**Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 4:12pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/ignored-white-space/233754/1 "2007-07-26T16:12:12Z")

</div>

I’m NEW to php. I am working my way through a text book, and came upon a problem. I understood white space was ignored in PHP, yet in line 4 of the following code, if I eliminate the white space on either side of “$distance / 10”, the page doesn’t work. can someone explain why, so i might be able to avoid this problem in the future.

Thanks

```php
while ($distance <= 250)
{
echo "<tr>
 <td align='right'>$distance</td>
";
echo " <td align = 'right'> ". $distance / 10 ." </td>
</tr>
";
$distance += 50;
}

```