How to know what's wrong?

understanding errors

[too much information]

Alright you PHP maniacs! help me out here. :)

I finally set up my Mac to run my first PHP script and I tried to run it and all I get is errors. I edit, the error says a different line and I start the sequence again. Problem is I now have a line that I don't know why it's wrong.

In ASP I get an error number and I can search and find a reason that the error occured, however in PHP I just get

Parse error: parse error, expecting `','' or `';'' in /Users/brownie/Sites/dog_day/dir.php on line 10

Is there a file I need to know about that will tell me what error actually occured? How do I know what I'm doing wrong?

[waitman]

Believe me, PHP error message are much more revealing than ASP error messages. I promise you.

You really need to look at the code. A parse error means that there is something wrong with syntax.

Perhaps you could post lines 9,10,11 and 12 and someone could spot the error.

Take care,

[jamesa]

I read that error as it's expecting a comma or semi-colon on line 10. Forgetting to end with a semi-colon is pretty common. Same with not closing quotes or brackets. But often with these types of situations the problem actually occurs several lines before where the error is reported. So start at line 10 and work backwards.

[lorax]

As jamesa says.

It's most likely a missing ';' at the end of line 9

[jonknee]

The line numbers are almost never right, but you just have to look back. The error will never be farther ahead.

[willybfriendly]

Go looking for that missing semi. Count your blessings that it is in line 10 and not line 110. Parse errors are sometimes pretty frustrating since the error can be many, many lines before it generates the error.

WBF

[waitman]

hmmmm

most of the time a parse error reports the correct line, or it is the line before.

although sometimes it reports the line that is the end of the file. this happens when you do not close a curly bracket. I agree that these are usually the most difficult parse errors to discover and correct.

best,

[too much information]

Wow, great responses! I take a day off and the troops show up! I'll check my ';' situation. I'm just not used to the PHP process yet.

If I still can't get it I'll post my code. Although I have posted code before I don't like to because I don't like people thinking I want them to do my work for me, and because I like to try to figure things out on my own as much as possible.

Thanks for the pointers, I'll keep you posted.

[lorax]

>> The line numbers are almost never right

My experience is quite the contrary. But it helps to understand how the PHP engine thinks. Like when it tells you the error is on line 244 - which is actually the last line of HTML code. The error was an open if/else statement. The more I work with PHP the more I like it. Not always sensible but usually fair. ;)