This is probably an FAQ....

Atrax

... but I'm damned if I can find usable information on it.

My development server is running PHP 4.1.2
The live server is running PHP 4.0.6

development version worked fine using the $GET{}, $SERVER{} -style variables syntax. However, we ran into a problem when deploying, because the live server doesn't support the shorthand version. Perhaps I should have checked. Oh well.

So I switched to $HTTP_GET_VARS{} style syntax. 4.1.2 doesn't seem to be backwards compatible with this syntax (unless I've missed a configuration option somewhere). Worse, the live server seems to have track_vars switched off, so the arrays aren't being populated.

so now what? Just for further info, I tried this

http://server/page.php?varname=value

echo $varname

and that doesn't seem to want to work (as PHP3.0 used to)

I'm an occassional PHP user, I don't need to worry about stuff like this, surely?

tell you what, you point me to a decent explanation of what's going on here (the PHP site does not count as decent in this case) and you'll win a small prize.

matto

have you checked this?

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php

the differences between the versions regarding predefined variables are explained there, hope it helps.

matto

Atrax

No, the php.net site is no use to me, as I've already said. that was my first stop.

this URL :

http://www.brokenchair.org/snippets/scripts/php4-1-1_varfix.phps

might be of some use, but I'm skeptical, having tried both $_GET{} and $HTTP_GET_VARS{} with no success so far. possibly there's some configuration screwup on the machine. And would you believe, I have no access to php.ini

Atrax

just realised I was using {} when i should have been using []

Atrax

... scoping issue. evidently the _GET[] exists in a scope which can be used within functions, but $HTTP_GET_VARS[] does not, sop has to be explicitly passed in.

I wish the docs had explained this better, or indeed at all.