
Contents > Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications > CFML Basics > Understanding CFML elements > Displaying variable output

Displaying variable output

Output is what remains after the ColdFusion server processes the CFML tags on a page. Usually the output has two parts:

Information that the user sees (for example, a confirmation message)
Information that is stored by the server as a result of processing (for example, user input collected from a form)

One of the tags that ColdFusion provides to display output is the cfoutput tag. The cfoutput tag instructs ColdFusion to process all the code between the cfoutput start and end tags. The syntax for the cfoutput tag looks like this:

<cfoutput>
{normal html, text, and coldfusion processing instructions}
</cfoutput>

To return the value of a variable, you must always surround the variable name with pound signs (#) and place the variable name between the cfoutput start and end tags. For example, the following code creates a variable and instructs the ColdFusion server to return the value of the variable:

<cfset my_first_name = "Kaleigh">
<cfset my_last_name = "Smith">
<cfset my_full_name = variables.my_first_name & " " & variables.my_last_name>
<cfoutput>
#variables.my_full_name# 
</cfoutput>

The following is the output:

Kaleigh Smith


Contents > Getting Started Building ColdFusion MX Applications > CFML Basics > Understanding CFML elements > Displaying variable output

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