Greg-
Hey, thanks.
Yea I suppose I am relatively new to PHP, been working with for about a year and a half now, so sometimes there are gaps in my knowledge, like this one. I'm fairly good at different debugging techniques, but I get this error when I run the script from the manual which is why I'm so confused by it.
T_ECHO is "echo". there's no "echo" anywhere near to line 6 - are you sure that D:\Inetpub\wwwroot\imagesexotic\Fall04\admin\check_set.php is the file you posted to the php-general list?
No, I must be confusing everybody like nuts. The actual first two lines of my LOCAL copy is
$root_dir = "/Users/jason/Sites/";
$folder_on_server = "";
NOT the one I had posted-- that was from my server copy. Actually the error message I get when I run it locally is
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ECHO in /Users/jason/Sites/images_exotic/REDESIGN2 FALL 04/admin/check_set_local.php on line 8
It comes out "T_PRINT" when I changes the "echo" to "print" -- which is more like line 4.
I was only testing it on two servers in the off chance that it was a versioning and/or windows ISS/apache problem -- but it did not appear to be either.
The LOCAL script I am working with is as follows:
<?php
// Note that !== did not exist until 4.0.0-RC2
$root_dir = "/Users/jason/Sites/";
$folder_on_server = "";
if ($handle = opendir($root_dir . $folder_on_server)) {
echo "Directory handle: $handle\n";
echo "Files:\n"; /* This is the correct way to loop over the directory. */
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
echo "$file\n";
}
closedir($handle);
}
?>Do you see the same parse error (T_ECHO) as described above? I think the problem has to do with how I've used opendir() maybe-- but I guess I'm asking for help because the manual seems to have incomplete or inaccurate information I was wondering if anyone else had seen this before.
Thanks again for your help -Jason-
What I would look for first is check every line - make sure it concludes with a ;
Also, don't start out by trying the same script on two servers. The script is simple enough, you should get it working in a closed environment first, and then try it elsewhere. This should cut down on the WTF factor quite a bit :)
General debugging rules:
1) on any parse error make sure every line near the line number ends with ;
2) make sure that when you type if (blah) { you type } before you fill in the details. The same goes for every control structure
3) don't use if/while/for/foreach without {} and you'll save trouble down the line
4) familiarize yourself with the list of tokens - it will help a lot in understanding what the parser is telling you.
http://us4.php.net/manual/en/tokens.php
Other than that, I also find tricky parse error bugs by deleting lines, then adding them back in one by one until the parse error returns.
The most useful debugging tool I've found is Zend IDE. You can get a free personal license that will disable some of the niftier features, but you will get the on-the-fly php validation which is REALLY useful. The bar along the right will have little red lines at every single parse error. It's brilliant. Plus you can step through the scripts, which is unmeasurably useful for learning the language.
Greg
