title: PHP - file_get_contents() automatically echoes to the HTML page
body: <p>I have a page on a remote server with the following line:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$contents = file_get_contents($search_url);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which automatically <em>echoes</em> $contents to the HTML page no matter what I do. It's as if I have done the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$contents = file_get_contents($search_url);
  echo $contents;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What could be causing PHP to do this? Is there any configuration item that needs changing?</p>