redemption in a blog

I have done a lot of programming in PHP and I concur, that parse errors are often times very bizarre. The runtime errors which PHP generates are very informative, especially with the backtrace function in PHP 4.2.

One nice aspect of Java is that you know when you execute the program that all parse errors are gone. I wonder if there is a syntax checker written for the PHP language that would assist in checking your code for validatity. It wouldn’t be a bad idea. Then you could setup ant to run it on your project.

Posted by: Dan Allen on July 20, 2004 11pm

I really need to foray into OOP PHP. I am missing so much fun. :p

Posted by: Aaron Brazell on July 21, 2004 1am

paamayim nekudotayim seems to be the official name of the :: notation - look at the manual:

http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/keyword.paamayim-nekudotayim.php

Wonder if it means something in some foreign language.

Posted by: Khlo on July 21, 2004 1am

Dan: Well, that’s one of the main premises of an interpreted language I guess. Though what you said about a syntax checker would be cool.

Aaron: Nah it’s not fun. It feels semi-broken (but mind you, I come from a Java programming background).

Khlo: Yup it means ‘a pair of colons’ in Hebrew.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on July 21, 2004 1am

I know what you mean about it feeling like it’s broken… After spending a ton of time using Java and being so strict with the way I handle objects, pass values, and implement I am somewhat reluctant to give it a go in PHP.

Posted by: Stephan Segraves on July 21, 2004 2am

There is a PHP parser that highlights syntax errors available as a plugin for jEdit (a lovely editor!), but I haven’t tried it myself yet because it needs the current development version of jEdit (4.2) and i’m using the stable version (4.1)
You can find jEdit here: http://www.jedit.org/
and the plugin here: http://plugins.jedit.org/plugins/?PHPParser

Oh, if you want to see a screenshot of jEdit: http://budts.be/weblog/item/332 (last 2 shots)

Posted by: TeRanEX on July 21, 2004 2am

The PHPeclipse Eclipse plugin contains an internal PHP parser, which should show much PHP parse errors.
But it’s not perfect at the moment.

Posted by: jsurfer on July 21, 2004 11pm

Just testing please dont mind it…. :)

Posted by: sidu on August 11, 2004 11pm

Just testing please dont mind it…. :)

Posted by: sidu on August 11, 2004 11pm

Just to let you know:
I installed jEdit 4.2 and the PHP Parser Plugin and it really works nice. Every time you open or save a php file it is being parsed and all errors are nicely shown in an errorlist.

Posted by: TeRanEX on August 13, 2004 10am

:) I’ve never seen that error myself, but it’s not at all cryptic for me: I speak Hebrew.

Posted by: Meitar on October 7, 2004 10pm

Yes, and something much more funny about this error, did anybody tried to set : error_reporting(0);
Because if you will do it so … you will still see the error!!! WOW!

Posted by: Coca IQ Bogdan on January 5, 2005 1pm

Um, I think that is because it is a fatal parse error. To stop displaying all errors, set the display_errors configuration setting in your php.ini to ‘off’ instead.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on January 5, 2005 8pm

$php -l myfile.php

Will do a parser check on your file.

Posted by: Jeff on August 2, 2005 2pm