Parse error using heredoc format

mongonv

Hey All,
I imagine this is probably something stupid, but I have run out of things to check. The code below geneeates the following error when tried in two different environments on different servers:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in /homepages/20/d116091336/htdocs/HLFReno/test.php on line 9

The code is as follows:

<?php
$page_string=<<<EOT
<html>
EOT;
echo($page_string);
?>
<head>
</head>
<BODY>
test
</BODY>
</HTML>

I am trying to do a template setup with an include for the header and one for the footer. It worked initially, then I modified the header include script and it all stopped working, even when I broke it down to this simpest case. If I change the <<<EOT to echos it works.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated,
Mongonv

dougal85

Make sure there is no whitespace before the "EOT;" or it wont be recognised.

mongonv

I did make sure that there is no leading or trailing spaces in the text. The EOT at the end is tight to the left margin and nothing after it, and the line breaks are as shown in the code I pasted.

Any other thoughts?

NogDog

I copied-and-pasted the code in your post to my editor, saved it, and ran it; and I got no errors with the output as expected. Therefore it would seem the error must be somewhere else, or you have an extraneous character in your code that's not in the sample here, or something else that's not showing up here. (Make sure your editor saves the file as plain ASCII text and not as Unicode text, as with the latter you editor will likely save the Unicode BOM character at the start of the file, which tends to play havoc with PHP scripts.)

mongonv

Hey NogDog,
That was the answer, the html editor I was using does apparently mess the characters to cause the issue. I was using 1st Page to edit the scripts and it does cause the problem when the file is saved. I tried using Zend Studio and Ultraedit to fix it and either would fix the file. I had to use Notepad to fix the file, replacing the special return codes with standard code and then the later 2 editors would save it correctly from then on.

So a safety tip to others, beware of using 1st Page as a PHP editor.

Thanks much and have a Merry Xmas,
MongoNV