parse error

afrankford

I am practicing with a generic script from a book that I am reading. I keep getting an error message when I try to open the page in a browser.

<?php

if (empty ($userName)) {
print <<<HERE
<form>
Please enter your name:
<input type="text" name="userName"><br>
<input type="submit">
HERE;

} else {
print "Hi there, $userName!";
}

I thought this would be about as simple as I could get, but I keep getting this error:
Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /usr/local/.../userName.php on line 30

Line 30 is after the </html> tag. I've matched all my brackets and used <?php instead of <?.

Could someone send me in the right direction here?
Thanks

maxpup979

try this:

<?php

if (empty ($userName)) {
print "HERE";
?>
<form>
Please enter your name:
<input type="text" name="userName"><br>
<input type="submit">
</form>
<?php

} else {
print "Hi there, $userName!";
}

?>

tekky

there is no </html> tag in your post...

post the entire file since you are referencing things outside of the current posts material

afrankford

Here is the whole page:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title> User Name </title>
<meta name="" content="">
<meta name="" content="">
<meta name="" content="">
</head>

<body>

<?php

if (empty ($userName)) {
print <<<HERE
<form>
Please enter your name:
<input type="text" name="userName"><br>
<input type="submit">
HERE;

} else {
print "Hi there, $userName!";
}

</body>
</html>

Sorry about that!

tekky

i've tried it on my local setup and get an error from the HEREDOC formatting for some reason...

TheDefender

Not sure if it makes a difference or not, but I personally use echo with HEREDOC syntax, rather than print... The manual isn't specific (that I can find) on whether you're supposed to use one or the other, but I learned HEREDOC syntax using echo, and so that's what I do.

What is the name of this book you are using afrankford? Throw it away and dig your nose right into the php and MySQL manuals instead... Then when you need help with scripts and quotes, come here and ask for help. By the time books hit the shelves, they're usually out of date with their material. (with a few exceptions noted by the authors who frequent this site.) 😉

tekky

TheDefender wrote:
Not sure if it makes a difference or not, but I personally use echo with HEREDOC syntax, rather than print... The manual isn't specific (that I can find) on whether you're supposed to use one or the other, but I learned HEREDOC syntax using echo, and so that's what I do.

What is the name of this book you are using afrankford? Throw it away and dig your nose right into the php and MySQL manuals instead... Then when you need help with scripts and quotes, come here and ask for help. By the time books hit the shelves, they're usually out of date with their material. (with a few exceptions noted by the authors who frequent this site.) 😉

I tried changing the print to echo also... still got errors with it for some reason :eek:

wilku

I copy-pasted your code and it works all right. I've got my register_globals turned off, so it doesn't work as expected after form was sent, but for the first time it doesn't give any errors.

The one that works with register_globals off:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title> User Name </title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
if (empty ($_GET['userName'])) {
print <<<HERE
<form>
Please enter your name:
<input type="text" name="userName"><br>
<input type="submit">
HERE;
} else {
print "Hi there, $_GET[userName]!";
}
?>
</body>
</html>