It’s debatable whether or not it’s good practice to use short syntax in PHP. I personally prefer to use short syntax because it keeps my view files looking tidy.

The regular expression below will find all one-liner print and echo statements (e.g. <?php print $var; ?>) and convert them to <?= $var ?> statements. It will not match statements containing closing brackets, for example when using ternary operators: <?= ($foo == $bar) ? 'Foobar' : 'Foo' ?>

Find:
<\?php[\s]*(print|echo)[\s]*\(?([^>\)]+?)\)?[\s]*;?[\s]*\?>
Replace:
<?= $2 ?>