Lint or Debugger for Php?

Anon

Is anyone aware of a pc platform based lint or debugger for Php? The error messages are very cryptic, usually pointing to the entirely wrong area of code. I don't really need to run php locally, but if I could find something that points out problems before hand I might be able to find errors easier. HELP!

jordan

Hmm .. I always found PHP's error messages relatively intuitive. Compared to things like MySQL, at least. It tells you the line number (unless it's a parse error, in which case it can get kinda fuzzy) and what the error is. What more could you ask for?

Anon

LOL! Well considering I'm dealing with a parse error, I suppose a LINT program would be nice. its a difficult to debug when the error message points to a simple line of ;

echo "$query";

I know the bug isn't there, but finding it has already consumed about 6 hours (I gave up for the night and will restart again tomorrow).

Bob

gerardg

it's usually caused by mismatched quotes somewhere above, ie.

echo '$query";

kparker

Yep, this is the downside of PHP allowing newlines inside quoted strings. I guess it should be some consolation to know the cause of your agony is a side effect of a feature that some consider very useful.

And I do run the command-line version of PHP locally, for the precise purpose of getting a quick-and-dirty syntax/parse check before I upload things to the server.