Very newbish problem (i cant even get the hello world program to work :-\)

Mr207

Hi all,

I'm taking a web programming class, and we're doing a section on PHP. Now I'm not trying to get anyone to do my homework for me, the "Hello World" program isnt it. Ive got to write a much larger more complicated PHP program. But I can't even get the Hello World program to function properly, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Thats the code I'm using. When I load the site the output I get is:

Hello, world!

" ?>

Its almost as if my browsers (I tried using both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox) dont recognize the PHP code. If I try the same code without the and , then I get a blank screen. Has this problem come up before for anyone else?

bradgrafelman

Do this:

<?PHP
phpinfo();
?>

Do you see a page with multiple tables outlining different directives/settings of PHP? If not, which I expect you won't, you haven't installed PHP on your webserver correctly.

Mr207

Well the thing is, our school gives us a webserver to upload our sites to, and it does have php installed. Infact the teacher has php scripts on his site that work fine. If I copy the source and make my own script and then upload it though, it exhibits the same type of behavior.

blackhorse

PHP has to be enabled on your site.

bradgrafelman

If your school is hosting it, make sure the site you are on (one server can have many virtual "sites") has PHP enabled.

If it is, give us a link to one of your scripts. This may sound stupid, but... did you make sure the file ends in .php, i.e. "index.php" and NOT "index.html" ?

Mr207

How would I go about enabling PHP scripts on my site, or even checking to see if they are?

bradgrafelman

Contact the host/administrator/server owner/tech. coordinator/etc.

cdwhalley_com

Has anyone thought that it might be that his PHP code is missing a semi-colon?

echo "<p>Hello, World!</p>";

bradgrafelman

cdwhalley.com wrote:
Has anyone thought that it might be that his PHP code is missing a semi-colon?

Doesn't matter. You can mangle syntax as much as you possibly can, but PHP would never expose the source code. Since he can see the source (the ?> and whatnot), then PHP must not be parsing the file.

Houdini

The entirety of PHP code as originally posted was

<?php echo "Hello, world!" ?>

which is embedded in HTML since there is no other statement in this vast code PHP will process if the semicolon is only necessary to seperate statements so

Has anyone thought that it might be that his PHP code is missing a semi-colon?
PHP Code:

echo "Hello, World!";

is not needed. Plus the PHP is probably not set up or it would have at least given an error, so it does not appear that PHP is enabled and had the user tried to use phpinfo() as suggested earlier by bradgrafelman then we and the poster would all now know that this is the case.

I say PHP is improperly or not set up at all! I also think that it might be a part of the course to give the student a webserver space but that the student must set up the PHP, and if they can not figure that out then they will fail this particular test. So it is entirely possible that this is the case.

Undrium

It doesn't make a difference if you save it as .php or .html then?

bradgrafelman

Yes, for PHP to parse a file, it has to be saved as .php

Now, you can get your webserver to parse .html files for PHP, but that requires some manual configuration. So, in short, yes, the file must have a .php extension.

Undrium

nods Was the first mistake I did when I started with php.

cdwhalley_com

:o
Never mind then