PHP loop hanging/interspersed/threaded through HTML

Question

I can't figure out how to say what I'm talking about which is a big part of why I'm stuck. In PHP I often see code like this

html
<?php
   language construct that uses brackets {
       some code;
?>
more html
<?php
       some more code;
    }
?>
rest of html

Is there any name for this? Having seen this lead me to try it out so here is a concrete example whose behavior doesn't make sense to me

<div id="content">
<ul id="nav">
<?php
    $path = 'content';
    $dir = dir($path);
    while(false !== ($file = $dir->read())) {
        if(preg_match('/.+\.txt/i', $file)) {
            echo "<li class=\"$file\">$file</li>";
?>
</ul>
<?php
            echo "<p class=\"$file\">" . file_get_contents($path . '/' . $file) . '</p>';
        }
    }
?>
</div>

Which outputs roughly <div><ul><li></li></ul><li></li><p></p>...</div> instead of <div><ul><li></li>...</ul><p></p>...</div>, which is what I thought would happen and what I want to happen. To make it clearer I want the <li> inside the <ul> and the <p> inside the <div>. Yes, I know there is an easy solution but I was wondering if there is a way to do it with the technique I am looking for a name for.

Answer 1

Just something to add here:

If you're using a PHP loop for templating, there is another syntax that helps you avoid confusion with indentation and which-braces-match-which:

<?php
    foreach($items as $item):
?>
<b>item: </b> <?php echo $item; ?> <br />
<?php
    endforeach;
?>

this may be an oversimplification, but really you shouldn't be using anything more complicated than this in a template. Things like the $items variable and anything else you need should be set up by the code which includes the template, and not in the template itself.