yeah, i got that much out of laserlight's reply. but, error reporting isn't really what i'm looking for, and i'm not sure that it's really possible to have some type of code scanning utility.
for example, if one is trying to use strict XHTML, there are places at w3.org that will validate your code for you. in that situation, the code has not been sent to a user agent in such a way that proper vs erroneous display could be considered. so, i was applying that concept to php code-- thinking that perhaps there is some utility out there that would scan code, look for errors in logic, lines missing terminators, etc. , and give the user some idea in advance if his or her code is going to cause an error, and what lines he or she should examine before attempting to execute the script. i hope that makes sense, and i hope you can see why error reporting is not the same as validation, at least from my viewpoint. so, that said, does anyone know of any utilities that can scan for potential errors in php code? i think it would be an extremely useful learning tool-- as less time would be spent trying to find a needle in a haystack, which is what often i have encountered thus far-- spelling errors, and silly things like that which inevitably cause a crash-- when in fact there is nothing wrong w/ the logic, or SQL, etc
