This should be well known, and people should be aware as to why they are using either or. But, I've noticed lately that a lot of people new to PHP or programming are not aware of the difference. Depending on what you need you, need to decide what the differences are.

It's a short post, but for someone just getting into PHP, it's some handy information to have. He looks at both functions and gives what they're good for. He does throw in a few caveats, though - including an issue with parse errors in included files pre-PHP 4.3.5...