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', $file)) {
            echo "<li>$file</li>";
?>
</ul>
<?php
            echo file_get_contents($path . '/' . $file);
        }
    }
?>
</div>

Which outputs roughly <div><ul><li></li></ul><li></li>...</div> instead of <div><ul><li></li>...</ul></div> which is what I thought would happen and what I want to happen.