title: PHP using &lt; and &gt; in place of < and >
body: <p>I'm following an <a href="http://buildinternet.com/2009/12/creating-your-first-php-application-part-2/" rel="nofollow">online PHP tutorial</a> which uses <code>&amp;lt;</code> and <code>&amp;gt;</code> instead of <code>&lt;</code> and <code>&gt;</code> in the PHP code.  For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&amp;lt;?php
  
  class User {
  function __construct($data) {
      $this-&amp;gt;id = (isset($data['id'])) ? $data['id'] : "";
      $this-&amp;gt;username = (isset($data['username'])) ? $data['username'] : "";
      $this-&amp;gt;hashedPassword = (isset($data['password'])) ? $data['password'] : "";
      $this-&amp;gt;email = (isset($data['email'])) ? $data['email'] : "";
      $this-&amp;gt;joinDate = (isset($data['join_date'])) ? $data['join_date'] : "";
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there a reason this is being done or is the formatting on the tutorial website causing it to display like that?</p>
  
  <p>i.e. should I actually be using <code>&amp;lt;</code> and <code>&amp;gt;</code> in my .php files?</p>