Blank page when a "parse error" occurs

LittleWing

Hi !

I haven't been using PHP for a while, worked on it again recently and I'm stuck with a silly problem :

I made a simple html page (test.php) containing some php script within the <body></body> section.

If there's no error in the php script, the page displays correctly (title in the title bar, some pure HTML content, etc)

When a "parse error" occurs, the only thing I can see is the "parse error" message, everything that's above in the page is not shown.

I can't recall this happened earlier so I just wonder if this is a normal behaviour or if there's a way to tell the server to process (and show) the rest of the page (I mean, everything above the error) even when an error occurs.

I'm running Apache 1.3.22 (+mysql) on a localhost, browser is IE 5.5 SP2, on W2K.

All my previous work displays fine, as long as there are no errors)

Thanks for any hint.
Greetings.

volleytotal_ch

as far as i know, this is the normal way how php handles with parse errors.
In my testing environment it is always like this if i have a parse error in my script!
Dunno if there is a way around this problem 🙁

siwis

Likewise to what volleytotal.ch says.

The easiest way to imagine how your php script works is to think of it this way.

php script runs working through the script line by line looking for things to do. Any if statements are actioned if the tests declared are passed. All the time the script is running it writes its output to a html buffer which it only sends to apache (or other webserver) once the script is complete.
If the script comes across a parse error, or other error which would cause the script to ditch, it cannot complete the html output to the buffer and as such erases that buffer sending an error message to the webserver. Hense you only see the error message on screen.

mysql erros tend not to cause the script to ditch so you still get the normal html stuff passed but with the error message displayed where any sql type output stuff should be.

LittleWing

Originally posted by siwis
mysql erros tend not to cause the script to ditch so you still get the normal html stuff passed but with the error message displayed where any sql type output stuff should be. [/B]

Okay, I see.
Indeed, I mostly used php with mysql before and I recall it showed the errors or warnings within the rest of the html page, so I've been surprised not to see anything within standard html pages.

Since I had reinstalled the php engine recently, I thought I had messed up in the config files.

I feel better now you both tell me it's the standard way php handles errors 😉

Thanks very much for your reply.