Different ways to display title

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I’m new to WordPress and I’m still learning from tutorials, but I’m confused with their conflicted ways. What the difference between these two ways to make the title a link:

<h1>
    <a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/<?php the_permalink(); ?>">
    <?php the_title(); ?>
    </a>
</h1>

and

<?php the_title(sprintf(
            '<h1><a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/%s">',
            esc_url(get_permalink())),
            '</a></h1>');
?>

Is it a performance issue? or a security? or what?

thanks.

Edit:

I know that the function the_permalink() has embedded esc_url functionality while get_permalink doesn’t. So in my case, is there still any difference?

3 s
3

The second form can be handy too:

  • We can also use the third parameter:

    the_title( $before, $after, $echo );

    to assign the title to a variable.

    Here’s an example:

    $title = the_title( '<h1 class="entry-title">', '</h1>', false );

  • This can also help reducing the use of <?php ?> delimiters.

    Here’s an example from the Twenty Fifteen theme

     if ( is_single() ) :
     the_title( '<h1 class="entry-title">', '</h1>' );
 else :
     the_title( sprintf( '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/%s" rel="bookmark">', esc_url( get_permalink() ) ), '</a></h2>' );
 endif;

    but there are of course various ways to get rid of such if/else parts.

    Here’s an alternative form for comparison:

    <?php if( is_single() ) : ?>
    <h1 class="entry-title"><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
<?php else : ?>
    <h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/239292/<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<?php endif; ?>

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