Q:

echo php variable and html in Wordpress

I am playing around with wordpress and wondering, why this line of code works:
echo "<a href='....'>$name</a>";

I learned it this way:
echo "<a href='....'>".$name."</a>";

Is there something special defined in WP to make this work?

A:

In PHP, there are two types of String.
The first type uses the single quotes, as follows.
$val = 'this is a simple string';

The second type is as follows:
$val = "This is a not so simple string";

With the latter type, any variables included in the string will be resolved to their values, so:
$val = "Hello there";

$message = 'Dave says $val';
// Literally equals: Dave says $val

$message2 = "Dave says $val";
// Literally equals: Dave says Hello there

There are lots of other differences, which you can read about here.

