PHP parse syntax errors and how to solve them

Question

Everyone runs into syntax errors  Even experienced programmers make typos  For newcomers  it s just part of the learning process  However  it s often easy to interpret error messages such as   PHP Parse error  syntax error  unexpected     in index php on line 20  The unexpected symbol isn t always the real culprit  But the line number gives a rough idea of where to start looking   Always look at the code context  The syntax mistake often hides in the mentioned or in previous code lines  Compare your code against syntax examples from the manual   While not every case matches the other  Yet there are some general steps to solve syntax mistakes  This references summarized the common pitfalls   Unexpected T STRING  Unexpected T VARIABLE  Unexpected   varname   T VARIABLE   Unexpected T CONSTANT ENCAPSED STRING  Unexpected T ENCAPSED AND WHITESPACE  Unexpected  end  Unexpected T FUNCTION     Unexpected  Unexpected  Unexpected  Unexpected    Unexpected  Unexpected    Unexpected T IF  Unexpected T FOREACH  Unexpected T FOR  Unexpected T WHILE  Unexpected T DO  Unexpected T PRINT  Unexpected T ECHO  Unexpected T LNUMBER  Unexpected    Unexpected continue  T CONTINUE Unexpected continue  T BREAK Unexpected continue  T RETURN   Unexpected      Unexpected T INLINE HTML     Unexpected T PAAMAYIM NEKUDOTAYIM     Unexpected T OBJECT OPERATOR     Unexpected T DOUBLE ARROW      Unexpected T SL      Unexpected T BOOLEAN OR     Unexpected T BOOLEAN AND      Unexpected T IS EQUAL  Unexpected T IS GREATER OR EQUAL  Unexpected T IS IDENTICAL  Unexpected T IS NOT EQUAL  Unexpected T IS NOT IDENTICAL  Unexpected T IS SMALLER OR EQUAL  Unexpected  lt   Unexpected  gt   Unexpected T NS SEPARATOR      Unexpected character in input       ASCII 92  state 1  Unexpected  public   T PUBLIC   Unexpected  private   T PRIVATE   Unexpected  protected   T PROTECTED   Unexpected  final   T FINAL      Unexpected T STATIC      Unexpected T CLASS     Unexpected  use   T USE   Unexpected T DNUMBER  Unexpected    comma    Unpexected    period    Unexpected    semicolon   Unexpected    asterisk   Unexpected    colon   Unexpected      expecting     or      Unexpected  amp   call-time pass-by-reference   Unexpected     Closely related references   What does this error mean in PHP   runtime errors   Parse error  syntax error  unexpected T XXX Parse error  syntax error  unexpected T ENCAPSED AND WHITESPACE Parse error  syntax error  unexpected T VARIABLE   What does this symbol mean in PHP   language tokens  Those        smart         quotes mean nothing to PHP  And   The PHP manual on php net and its various language tokens Or Wikipedia s syntax introduction on PHP  And lastly our php tag-wiki of course   While Stack Overflow is also welcoming rookie coders  it s mostly targetted at professional programming questions   Answering everyone s coding mistakes and narrow typos is considered mostly off-topic  So please take the time to follow the basic steps  before posting syntax fixing requests  If you still have to  please show your own solving initiative  attempted fixes  and your thought process on what looks or might be wrong   If your browser displays error messages such as  quot SyntaxError  illegal character quot   then it s not actually php-related  but a javascript-syntax error   Syntax errors raised on vendor code  Finally  consider that if the syntax error was not raised by editing your codebase  but after an external vendor package install or upgrade  it could be due to PHP version incompatibility  so check the vendor s requirements against your platform setup

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Unexpected    These days  the unexpected   array bracket is commonly seen on outdated PHP versions  The short array syntax is available since PHP    5 4  Older installations only support array      php53   array 1  2  3    php54    1  2  3                Array function result dereferencing is likewise not available for older PHP versions    result   get whatever    key                              Reference - What does this error mean in PHP  -  Syntax error  unexpected     shows the most common and practical workarounds   Though  you re always better off just upgrading your PHP installation  For shared webhosting plans  first research if e g  SetHandler php56-fcgi can be used to enable a newer runtime   See also    PHP syntax for dereferencing function result   possible as of PHP 5 4 PHP syntax error  unexpected   39    39  Shorthand for arrays  is there a literal syntax like    or     PHP 5 3 10 vs PHP 5 5 3 syntax error unexpected   39    39  PHP Difference between array   and    PHP Array Syntax Parse Error Left Square Bracket  quot   quot    BTW  there are also preprocessors and PHP 5 4 syntax down-converters if you re really clingy with older   slower PHP versions   Other causes for Unexpected   syntax errors  If it s not the PHP version mismatch  then it s oftentimes a plain typo or newcomer syntax mistake    You can t use array property declarations expressions in classes  not even in PHP nbsp 7   protected  var  x      Nope                    Confusing   with opening curly braces   or parentheses   is a common oversight   foreach   a as  b              Or even   function foobar  a   b   c                      Or trying to dereference constants  before PHP 5 6  as arrays    var   const 123              At least PHP interprets that const as a constant name   If you meant to access an array variable  which is the typical cause here   then add the leading   sigil - so it becomes a  varname  You are trying to use the global keyword on a member of an associative array   This is not valid syntax   global  var  key         Unexpected   closing square bracket  This is somewhat rarer  but there are also syntax accidents with the terminating array   bracket    Again mismatches with   parentheses or   curly braces are common   function foobar  a   b   c                                 Or trying to end an array where there isn t one    var   2     Which often occurs in multi-line and nested array declarations    array    1  2 3  4  5 6 7  8   9 10   11  12   15                                                    If so  use your IDE for bracket matching to find any premature   array closure  At the very least use more spacing and newlines to narrow it down

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I think this topic is totally overdiscussed overcomplicated  Using an IDE is THE way to go to completely avoid any syntax errors  I would even say that working without an IDE is kind of unprofessional  Why  Because modern IDEs check your syntax after every character you type  When you code and your entire line turns red  and a big warning notice shows you the exact type and the exact position of the syntax error  then there s absolutely no need to search for another solution  Using a syntax-checking IDE means  You ll  effectively  never run into syntax errors again  simply because you see them right as you type  Seriously  Excellent IDEs with syntax check  all of them are available for Linux  Windows and Mac    NetBeans  free  PHPStorm   199 USD  Eclipse with PHP Plugin  free  Sublime   80 USD   mainly a text editor  but expandable with plugins  like PHP Syntax Parser

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Unexpected  continue   T CONTINUE   continue is a statement  like for  or if  and must appear standalone  It cannot be used as part of an expression  Partly because continue doesn t return a value  but in an expression every sub-expression must result in some value so the overall expression results in a value  That s the difference between a statement and an expression   That means continue cannot be used in a ternary statement or any statement that requires a return value   Unexpected  break   T BREAK   Same goes for break  of course  It s also not usable in expression context  but a strict statement  on the same level as foreach or an if block    Unexpected  return   T RETURN   Now this might be more surprising for return  but that s also just a block-level statement  It does return a value  or NULL  to the higher scope function  but it does not evaluate as expression itself    That is  there s no point in doing return return false

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Unexpected    Opening parentheses typically follow language constructs such as if foreach for array list or start an arithmetic expression  They re syntactically incorrect after  strings   a previous     a lone    and in some typical declaration contexts     Function declaration parameters   A rarer occurrence for this error is trying to use expressions as default function parameters  This is not supported  even in PHP7   function header fallback  value   expires   time     90000      Parameters in a function declaration can only be literal values or constant expressions  Unlike for function invocations  where you can freely use whatever 1 something   2   etc   Class property defaults   Same thing for class member declarations  where only literal constant values are allowed  not expressions   class xyz                           var  default   get config  xyz default      Put such things in the constructor  See also Why don t PHP attributes allow functions   Again note that PHP 7 only allows var  xy   1   2  3  constant expressions there   JavaScript syntax in PHP   Using JavaScript or jQuery syntax won t work in PHP for obvious reasons    lt  php            print   document  text      When this happens  it usually indicates an unterminated preceding string  and literal  lt script gt  sections leaking into PHP code context   isset      empty  key  next  current   Both isset   and empty   are language built-ins  not functions  They need to access a variable directly  If you inadvertently add a pair of parentheses too much  then you d create an expression however               if  isset    GET  id          The same applies to any language construct that requires implicit variable name access  These built-ins are part of the language grammar  therefore don t permit decorative extra parentheses   User-level functions that require a variable reference -but get an expression result passed- lead to runtime errors instead      Unexpected      Absent function parameter   You cannot have stray commas last in a function call  PHP expects a value there and thusly complains about an early closing   parenthesis                   callfunc 1  2       A trailing comma is only allowed in array   or list   constructs   Unfinished expressions   If you forget something in an arithmetic expression  then the parser gives up  Because how should it possibly interpret that                     var   2    1        And if you forgot the closing   even  then you d get a complaint about the unexpected semicolon instead   Foreach as constant   For forgotten variable   prefixes in control statements you will see                             foreach   array as wrong      PHP here sometimes tells you it expected a    instead  Because a class   variable could have satisfied the expected  variable expression       Unexpected    Curly braces   and   enclose code blocks  And syntax errors about them usually indicate some incorrect nesting     Unmatched subexpressions in an if   Most commonly unbalanced   and   are the cause if the parser complains about the opening curly   appearing too early  A simple example                                   if    x     y   amp  amp   2    true      Count your parentheses or use an IDE which helps with that  Also don t write code without any spaces  Readability counts     and   in expression context   You can t use curly braces in expressions  If you confuse parentheses and curlys  it won t comply to the language grammar                 var   5    7    x     There are a few exceptions for identifier construction  such as local scope variable   references    Variable variables or curly var expressions   This is pretty rare  But you might also get   and   parser complaints for complex variable expressions                           print  Hello   world 2          Though there s a higher likelihood for an unexpected   in such contexts      Unexpected    When getting an  unexpected    error  you ve mostly closed a code block too early     Last statement in a code block   It can happen for any unterminated expression   And if the last line in a function code block lacks a trailing   semicolon   function whatever         doStuff                    Here the parser can t tell if you perhaps still wanted to add   25  to the function result or something else   Invalid block nesting   Forgotten     You ll sometimes see this parser error when a code block was   closed too early  or you forgot an opening   even   function doStuff         if  true               print  yes                 In above snippet the if didn t have an opening   curly brace  Thus the closing   one below became redundant  And therefore the next closing    which was intended for the function  was not associable to the original opening   curly brace   Such errors are even harder to find without proper code indentation  Use an IDE and bracket matching      Unexpected    expecting    Language constructs which require a condition declaration header and a code block will trigger this error     Parameter lists   For example misdeclared functions without parameter list are not permitted                      function whatever       Control statement conditions   And you can t likewise have an if without condition       if       Which doesn t make sense  obviously  The same thing for the usual suspects  for foreach  while do  etc      If you ve got this particular error  you definitely should look up some manual examples

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Unexpected  end  When PHP talks about an  unexpected  end   it means that your code ended prematurely   The message is a bit misleading when taken literally  It s not about a variable named   end   as sometimes assumed by newcomers  It refers to the  end of file   EOF       Cause  Unbalanced   and   for code blocks   and function or class declarations    It s pretty much always about a missing   curly brace to close preceding code blocks    Again  use proper indentation to avoid such issues  Use an IDE with bracket matching  to find out where the   is amiss   There are keyboard shortcuts in most IDEs and text editors    NetBeans  PhpStorm  Komodo  Ctrl  and Ctrl  Eclipse  Aptana  CtrlShiftP Atom  Sublime  Ctrlm - Zend Studio CtrlM Geany  Notepad    CtrlB - Joe  CtrlG - Emacs  C-M-n - Vim        Most IDEs also highlight matching braces  brackets and parentheses  Which makes it pretty easy to inspect their correlation     Unterminated expressions  And Unexpected  end syntax parser error can also occur for unterminated expressions or statements     var   func 1     gt EOF   So  look at the end of scripts first  A trailing   is often redundant for the last statement in any PHP script  But you should have one  Precisely because it narrows such syntax issues down   Indented HEREDOC markers  Another common occurrence appears with HEREDOC or NOWDOC strings  The terminating marker goes ignored with leading spaces  tabs  etc    print  lt  lt  lt  END     Content        Content       END      terminator isn t exactly at the line start   Therefore the parser assumes the HEREDOC string to continue until the end of the file  hence  Unexpected  end    Pretty much all IDEs and syntax-highlighting editors will make this obvious or warn about it   Escaped Quotation marks  If you use   in a string  it has a special meaning  This is called an  Escape Character  and normally tells the parser to take the next character literally    Example  echo  Jim said   Hello     will print Jim said  hello   If you escape the closing quote of a string  the closing quote will be taken literally and not as intended  i e  as a printable quote as part of the string and not close the string  This will show as a parse error commonly after you open the next string or at the end of the script   Very common error when specifiying paths in Windows   C  xampp htdocs   is wrong  You need  C   xampp  htdocs      Alternative syntax  Somewhat rarer you can see this syntax error when using the alternative syntax for statement code blocks in templates  Using if  and else  and a missing endif  for example   See also    PHP syntax error    unexpected  end    Parse error  Syntax error  unexpected end of file in my PHP code Parse error syntax error unexpected end of file  using PHP PHP Parse error  syntax error  unexpected end of file in a CodeIgniter View Parse error  syntax error  unexpected end of file  Registration script   quot Parse error  syntax error  unexpected  end quot  For my uni registration assignment Fixing PHP Errors  PHP Error  3  Unexpected end of file

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Unexpected     This can occur if you are trying to use the splat operator      in an unsupported version of PHP      first became available in PHP 5 6 to capture a variable number of arguments to a function  function concatenate  transform      strings         string           foreach  strings as  piece             string     piece            return  transform  string       echo concatenate  quot strtoupper quot    quot I d  quot    quot like  quot   4   2   quot  apples quot       This would print     I D LIKE 6 APPLES  In PHP 7 4  you could use it for Array expressions   parts     apple    pear     fruits     banana    orange       parts   watermelon         banana    orange    apple    pear    watermelon

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For newbies to VS Code  if you see the syntax error  check if you have saved the file  If you have a wrong syntax  save the file  and then fix the syntax withou saving again  VS Code will keep showing you the error  The error message will disappear only after you save the file

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Unexpected T IS EQUAL  Unexpected T IS GREATER OR EQUAL  Unexpected T IS IDENTICAL  Unexpected T IS NOT EQUAL  Unexpected T IS NOT IDENTICAL  Unexpected T IS SMALLER OR EQUAL  Unexpected  lt   Unexpected  gt    Comparison operators such as      gt              lt  gt       and  lt   or  lt  and  gt  mostly should be used just in expressions  such as if expressions  If the parser complains about them  then it often means incorrect paring or mismatched     parens around them    Parens grouping  In particular for if statements with multiple comparisons you must take care to correctly count opening and closing parenthesis                             if    foo  lt  7   amp  amp   bar   gt  5     baz  lt  9                                    Here the if condition here was already terminated by the    Once your comparisons become sufficiently complex it often helps to split it up into multiple and nested if constructs rather  isset   mashed with comparing  A common newcomer is pitfal is trying to combine isset   or empty   with comparisons                             if  empty   POST  var      1       Or even                         if  isset  variable      value        This doesn t make sense to PHP  because isset and empty are language constructs that only accept variable names  It doesn t make sense to compare the result either  because the output is only already a boolean  Confusing  gt   greater-or-equal with   gt  array operator  Both operators look somewhat similar  so they sometimes get mixed up              if   var   gt  5            You only need to remember that this comparison operator is called  greater than or equal  to get it right   See also  If statement structure in PHP Nothing to compare against  You also can t combine two comparisons if they pertain the same variable name                      if   xyz  gt  5 and  lt  100    PHP can t deduce that you meant to compare the initial variable again  Expressions are usually paired according to operator precedence  so by the time the  lt  is seen  there d be only a boolean result left from the original variable   See also  unexpected T IS SMALLER OR EQUAL Comparison chains  You can t compare against a variable with a row of operators                         reult    5  lt   x  lt  10     This has to be broken up into two comparisons  each against  x   This is actually more a case of blacklisted expressions  due to equivalent operator associativity   It s syntactically valid in a few C-style languages  but PHP wouldn t interpret it as expected comparison chain either  Unexpected  gt   Unexpected  lt   The greater than  gt  or less than  lt  operators don t have a custom T XXX tokenizer name  And while they can be misplaced like all they others  you more often see the parser complain about them for misquoted strings and mashed HTML                             print   lt a href  z  gt Hello lt  a gt                         This amounts to a string   lt a href  z  being compared  gt  to a literal constant Hello and then another  lt  comparison  Or that s at least how PHP sees it  The actual cause and syntax mistake was the premature string   termination   It s also not possible to nest PHP start tags    lt  php echo  lt  php my func      gt                  See also    php unexpected T IS NOT EQUAL error syntax error  unexpected T IS EQUAL Syntax error on return statement http   forums phpfreaks com topic 96891-parse-error-syntax-error-unexpected-t-is-not-identical-expecting-or

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Unexpected  endwhile   T ENDWHILE  The syntax is using a colon - if there is no colon the above error will occur   lt  php while  query- gt fetch       gt         lt  php endwhile    gt   The alternative to this syntax is using curly brackets   lt  php while  query- gt fetch        gt          lt  php     gt   http   php net manual en control-structures while php

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Unexpected     If you are trying to use the null coalescing operator    in a version of PHP prior to PHP 7 you will get this error   lt     a    2     works in PHP 7   lt      empty  a      a   2     All versions of PHP  Unexpected      expecting variable A similar error can occur for nullable types  as in  function add  int  sum    int    Which again indicates an outdated PHP version being used  either the CLI version php -v or the webserver bound one phpinfo

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An error message that begins Parse error  syntax error  unexpected     can be caused by mistakenly writing a class static reference Class   Variable as Class  Variable

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What are the syntax errors   PHP belongs to the C-style and imperative programming languages  It has rigid grammar rules  which it cannot recover from when encountering misplaced symbols or identifiers  It can t guess your coding intentions     Most important tips  There are a few basic precautions you can always take    Use proper code indentation  or adopt any lofty coding style  Readability prevents irregularities  Use an IDE or editor for PHP with syntax highlighting  Which also help with parentheses bracket balancing    Read the language reference and examples in the manual  Twice  to become somewhat proficient    How to interpret parser errors  A typical syntax error message reads      Parse error  syntax error  unexpected T STRING  expecting     in file php on line 217   Which lists the possible location of a syntax mistake  See the mentioned file name and line number   A moniker such as T STRING explains which symbol the parser tokenizer couldn t process finally  This isn t necessarily the cause of the syntax mistake  however   It s important to look into previous code lines as well  Often syntax errors are just mishaps that happened earlier  The error line number is just where the parser conclusively gave up to process it all   Solving syntax errors  There are many approaches to narrow down and fix syntax hiccups    Open the mentioned source file  Look at the mentioned code line    For runaway strings and misplaced operators  this is usually where you find the culprit  Read the line left to right and imagine what each symbol does   More regularly you need to look at preceding lines as well    In particular  missing   semicolons are missing at the previous line ends statement   At least from the stylistic viewpoint    If   code blocks   are incorrectly closed or nested  you may need to investigate even further up the source code  Use proper code indentation to simplify that   Look at the syntax colorization    Strings and variables and constants should all have different colors  Operators  -    should be tinted distinct as well  Else they might be in the wrong context  If you see string colorization extend too far or too short  then you have found an unescaped or missing closing   or   string marker  Having two same-colored punctuation characters next to each other can also mean trouble  Usually  operators are lone if it s not     --  or parentheses following an operator  Two strings identifiers directly following each other are incorrect in most contexts   Whitespace is your friend   Follow any coding style    Break up long lines temporarily    You can freely add newlines between operators or constants and strings  The parser will then concretize the line number for parsing errors  Instead of looking at the very lengthy code  you can isolate the missing or misplaced syntax symbol  Split up complex if statements into distinct or nested if conditions  Instead of lengthy math formulas or logic chains  use temporary variables to simplify the code   More readable   fewer errors   Add newlines between    The code you can easily identify as correct  The parts you re unsure about  And the lines which the parser complains about     Partitioning up long code blocks really helps to locate the origin of syntax errors   Comment out offending code    If you can t isolate the problem source  start to comment out  and thus temporarily remove  blocks of code  As soon as you got rid of the parsing error  you have found the problem source  Look more closely there  Sometimes you want to temporarily remove complete function method blocks   In case of unmatched curly braces and wrongly indented code   When you can t resolve the syntax issue  try to rewrite the commented out sections from scratch   As a newcomer  avoid some of the confusing syntax constructs    The ternary     condition operator can compact code and is useful indeed  But it doesn t aid readability in all cases  Prefer plain if statements while unversed  PHP s alternative syntax  if  elseif  endif   is common for templates  but arguably less easy to follow than normal   code   blocks   The most prevalent newcomer mistakes are    Missing semicolons   for terminating statements lines  Mismatched string quotes for   or   and unescaped quotes within  Forgotten operators  in particular for the string   concatenation  Unbalanced   parentheses    Count them in the reported line  Are there an equal number of them   Don t forget that solving one syntax problem can uncover the next    If you make one issue go away  but other crops up in some code below  you re mostly on the right path  If after editing a new syntax error crops up in the same line  then your attempted change was possibly a failure   Not always though    Restore a backup of previously working code  if you can t fix it    Adopt a source code versioning system  You can always view a diff of the broken and last working version  Which might be enlightening as to what the syntax problem is    Invisible stray Unicode characters  In some cases  you need to use a hexeditor or different editor viewer on your source  Some problems cannot be found just from looking at your code    Try grep --color -P -n     x80- xFF    file php as the first measure to find non-ASCII symbols  In particular BOMs  zero-width spaces  or non-breaking spaces  and smart quotes regularly can find their way into the source code   Take care of which type of linebreaks are saved in files    PHP just honors  n newlines  not  r carriage returns  Which is occasionally an issue for MacOS users  even on OS nbsp  X for misconfigured editors   It often only surfaces as an issue when single-line    or   comments are used  Multiline         comments do seldom disturb the parser when linebreaks get ignored   If your syntax error does not transmit over the web   It happens that you have a syntax error on your machine  But posting the very same file online does not exhibit it anymore  Which can only mean one of two things    You are looking at the wrong file  Or your code contained invisible stray Unicode  see above   You can easily find out  Just copy your code back from the web form into your text editor   Check your PHP version  Not all syntax constructs are available on every server    php -v for the command line interpreter  lt  php phpinfo    for the one invoked through the webserver     Those aren t necessarily the same  In particular when working with frameworks  you will them to match up  Don t use PHP s reserved keywords as identifiers for functions methods  classes or constants  Trial-and-error is your last resort    If all else fails  you can always google your error message  Syntax symbols aren t as easy to search for  Stack Overflow itself is indexed by SymbolHound though   Therefore it may take looking through a few more pages before you find something relevant   Further guides    PHP Debugging Basics by David Sklar Fixing PHP Errors by Jason McCreary PHP Errors     10 Common Mistakes by Mario Lurig Common PHP Errors and Solutions How to Troubleshoot and Fix your WordPress Website A Guide To PHP Error Messages For Designers - Smashing Magazine   White screen of death  If your website is just blank  then typically a syntax error is the cause  Enable their display with    error reporting   E ALL display errors   1   In your php ini generally  or via  htaccess for mod php  or even  user ini with FastCGI setups   Enabling it within the broken script is too late because PHP can t even interpret run the first line  A quick workaround is crafting a wrapper script  say test php    lt  php    error reporting E ALL      ini set  display errors   1      include    broken-script php      Then invoke the failing code by accessing this wrapper script   It also helps to enable PHP s error log and look into your webserver s error log when a script crashes with HTTP 500 responses

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One more reason to occurrence of these errors is unexpected whitespace like similar characters with-in code  the code lines seems to be perfect  but they contains some specific characters which are similar to break line or whitespace or tab but they not get parsed by the parser  I face this issue when I try to put some code from webpage to the code editor by simply copy paste  I saw this error with array definition  everything was looking right in array definition  I can t sort out right error  finally I define this array in single line  then error was gone  then again I try to make that definition multiple like but manually adding break Enter  for each array element and saved the file this time no parsing error by editor and also no error while running it  For Example I faced issue with this snippet which was on one blog  actually can t post those snippets  cause stack overflow already knows the problem with code  then after solving it my working snippet is  which looks similar with one which shows parsing error syntax error  unexpected   auth    T CONSTANT ENCAPSED STRING   expecting         public  aliases              csrf   gt   CodeIgniter Filters CSRF  class           toolbar   gt   CodeIgniter Filters DebugToolbar  class           honeypot   gt   CodeIgniter Filters Honeypot  class           auth    gt   App Filters Auth  class

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Unexpected T LNUMBER  The token T LNUMBER refers to a  long    number    Invalid variable names  In PHP  and most other programming languages  variables cannot start with a number  The first character must be alphabetic or an underscore    1      Bad   1     Good      Quite often comes up for using preg replace-placeholders   1  in PHP context                                               preg replace      w   e    strtopupper  1      Where the callback should have been quoted   Now the  e regex flag has been deprecated  But it s sometimes still misused in preg replace callback functions   The same identifier constraint applies to object properties  btw             json- gt 0- gt value  While the tokenizer parser does not allow a literal  1 as variable name  one could use   1  or    1    Which is a syntactic workaround for non-standard identifiers   It s best to think of it as a local scope lookup  But generally  prefer plain arrays for such cases   Amusingly  but very much not recommended  PHPs parser allows Unicode-identifiers  such that    would be valid   Unlike a literal 1    Stray array entry  An unexpected long can also occur for array declarations - when missing   commas                     xy   array 1 2 3     Or likewise function calls and declarations  and other constructs    func 1  2  3   function xy  z 2   for   i 2 3 lt  z    So usually there s one of   or   missing for separating lists or expressions  Misquoted HTML  And again  misquoted strings are a frequent source of stray numbers                                   echo   lt td colspan  3  gt something bad lt  td gt      Such cases should be treated more or less like Unexpected T STRING errors  Other identifiers  Neither functions  classes  nor namespaces can be named beginning with a number either              function 123shop       Pretty much the same as for variable names

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Unexpected T STRING T STRING is a bit of a misnomer  It does not refer to a quoted  quot string quot   It means a raw identifier was encountered  This can range from bare words to leftover CONSTANT or function names  forgotten unquoted strings  or any plain text   Misquoted strings This syntax error is most common for misquoted string values however  Any unescaped and stray  quot  or   quote will form an invalid expression                                       echo  quot  lt a href  quot http   example com quot  gt click here lt  a gt  quot    Syntax highlighting will make such mistakes super obvious  It s important to remember to use backslashes for escaping   quot  double quotes  or    single quotes - depending on which was used as string enclosure   For convenience you should prefer outer single quotes when outputting plain HTML with double quotes within  Use double quoted strings if you want to interpolate variables  but then watch out for escaping literal  quot  double quotes  For lengthier output  prefer multiple echo print lines instead of escaping in and out  Better yet consider a HEREDOC section       Another example is using PHP entry inside HTML code generated with PHP   text     lt div gt some text with  lt  php echo  some php entry    gt  lt  div gt    This happens if  text is large with many lines and developer does not see the whole PHP variable value and focus on the piece of code forgetting about its source  Example is here See also What is the difference between single-quoted and double-quoted strings in PHP    Unclosed strings If you miss a closing  quot  then a syntax error typically materializes later  An unterminated string will often consume a bit of code until the next intended string value                                                           echo  quot Some text quot    a variable   quot and some runaway string   success  quot finished quot                It s not just literal T STRINGs which the parser may protest then  Another frequent variation is an Unexpected   gt   for unquoted literal HTML   Non-programming string quotes If you copy and paste code from a blog or website  you sometimes end up with invalid code  Typographic quotes aren t what PHP expects   text      Something something           these ain t quotes      Typographic smart quotes are Unicode symbols  PHP treats them as part of adjoining alphanumeric text  For example    these is interpreted as a constant identifier  But any following text literal is then seen as a bareword T STRING by the parser   The missing semicolon  again If you have an unterminated expression in previous lines  then any following statement or language construct gets seen as raw identifier           func1   function2     PHP just can t know if you meant to run two functions after another  or if you meant to multiply their results  add them  compare them  or only run one    or the other   Short open tags and  lt  xml headers in PHP scripts This is rather uncommon  But if short open tags are enabled  then you can t begin your PHP scripts with an XML declaration           lt  xml version  quot 1 0 quot   gt   PHP will see the  lt   and reclaim it for itself  It won t understand what the stray xml was meant for  It ll get interpreted as constant  But the version will be seen as another literal constant  And since the parser can t make sense of two subsequent literals values without an expression operator in between  that ll be a parser failure   Invisible Unicode characters A most hideous cause for syntax errors are Unicode symbols  such as the non-breaking space  PHP allows Unicode characters as identifier names  If you get a T STRING parser complaint for wholly unsuspicious code like   lt  php     print 123   You need to break out another text editor  Or an hexeditor even  What looks like plain spaces and newlines here  may contain invisible constants  Java-based IDEs are sometimes oblivious to an UTF-8 BOM mangled within  zero-width spaces  paragraph separators  etc  Try to reedit everything  remove whitespace and add normal spaces back in  You can narrow it down with with adding redundant   statement separators at each line start   lt  php      print 123   The extra   semicolon here will convert the preceding invisible character into an undefined constant reference  expression as statement   Which in return makes PHP produce a helpful notice   The     sign missing in front of variable names Variables in PHP are represented by a dollar sign followed by the name of the variable  The dollar sign     is a sigil that marks the identifier as a name of a variable  Without this sigil  the identifier could be a language keyword or a constant  This is a common error when the PHP code was  quot translated quot  from code written in another language  C  Java  JavaScript  etc    In such cases  a declaration of the variable type  when the original code was written in a language that uses typed variables  could also sneak out and produce this error   Escaped Quotation marks If you use   in a string  it has a special meaning  This is called an  quot Escape Character quot  and normally tells the parser to take the next character literally  Example  echo  Jim said   Hello     will print Jim said  hello  If you escape the closing quote of a string  the closing quote will be taken literally and not as intended  i e  as a printable quote as part of the string and not close the string  This will show as a parse error commonly after you open the next string or at the end of the script  Very common error when specifiying paths in Windows   quot C  xampp htdocs  quot  is wrong  You need  quot C   xampp  htdocs   quot    Typed properties You need PHP  7 4 to use property typing such as  public stdClass  obj

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Unexpected T IF  Unexpected T FOREACH  Unexpected T FOR  Unexpected T WHILE  Unexpected T DO  Unexpected T ECHO  Control constructs such as if  foreach  for  while  list  global  return  do  print  echo may only be used as statements  They usually reside on a line by themselves    Semicolon  where you at   Pretty universally have you missed a semicolon in the previous line if the parser complains about a control statement                  x   myfunc   if  true     Solution  look into the previous line  add semicolon    Class declarations  Another location where this occurs is in class declarations  In the class section you can only list property initializations and method sections  No code may reside there  class xyz       if  true         foreach   var      Such syntax errors commonly materialize for incorrectly nested   and    In particular when function code blocks got closed too early    Statements in expression context  Most language constructs can only be used as statements  They aren t meant to be placed inside other expressions                        var   array 1  2  foreach  else as      5  6    Likewise can t you use an if in strings  math expressions or elsewhere                   print  quot Oh   quot    if  true     quot you  quot       quot  won t work quot      Use a ternary condition here instead  when versed enough   For embedding if-like conditions in an expression specifically  you often want to use a    ternary evaluation  The same applies to for  while  global  echo and a lesser extend list              echo 123  echo 567   quot huh  quot    Whereas print   is a language built-in that may be used in expression context   But rarely makes sense     Reserved keywords as identifiers  You also can t use do or if and other language constructs for user-defined functions or class names   Perhaps in PHP  7  But even then it wouldn t be advisable     Your have a semi-colon instead of a colon     or curly bracket     after your control block  Control structures are typically wrapped in curly braces  but colons can be used in an alternative syntax  to represent their scope  If you accidentally use a semi-colon you prematurely close that block resulting in your closing statement throwing an error        foreach   errors as  error    lt -- should be   or

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Unexpected T CONSTANT ENCAPSED STRING  Unexpected T ENCAPSED AND WHITESPACE  The unwieldy names T CONSTANT ENCAPSED STRING and T ENCAPSED AND WHITESPACE refer to quoted  string  literals   They re used in different contexts  but the syntax issue are quite similar  T ENCAPSED    warnings occur in double quoted string context  while T CONSTANT    strings are often astray in plain PHP expressions or statements    Incorrect variable interpolation  And it comes up most frequently for incorrect PHP variable interpolation                                     echo  Here comes a  wrong  array   access     Quoting arrays keys is a must in PHP context  But in double quoted strings  or HEREDOCs  this is a mistake  The parser complains about the contained single quoted  string   because it usually expects a literal identifier   key there   More precisely it s valid to use PHP2-style simple syntax within double quotes for array references   echo  This is only  valid here          Nested arrays or deeper object references however require the complex curly string expression syntax   echo  Use   array  as usual    with curly syntax      If unsure  this is commonly safer to use  It s often even considered more readable  And better IDEs actually use distinct syntax colorization for that   Missing concatenation   If a string follows an expression  but lacks a concatenation or other operator  then you ll see PHP complain about the string literal                            print  Hello     WORLD          While it s obvious to you and me  PHP just can t guess that the string was meant to be appended there   Confusing string quote enclosures   The same syntax error occurs when confounding string delimiters  A string started by a single   or double   quote also ends with the same                     print   lt a href       link      gt click here lt  a gt                                                     That example started with double quotes  But double quotes were also destined for the HTML attributes  The intended concatenation operator within however became interpreted as part of a second string in single quotes      Tip  Set your editor IDE to use slightly distinct colorization for single and double quoted strings   It also helps with application logic to prefer e g  double quoted strings for textual output  and single quoted strings only for constant-like values     This is a good example where you shouldn t break out of double quotes in the first place  Instead just use proper    escapes for the HTML attributes   quotes   print   lt a href     link    gt click here lt  a gt      While this can also lead to syntax confusion  all better IDEs editors again help by colorizing the escaped quotes differently   Missing opening quote   Equivalently are forgotten opening     quotes a recipe for parser errors                     make url login    open      Here the      would become a string literal after a bareword  when obviously login was meant to be a string parameter   Array lists   If you miss a   comma in an array creation block  the parser will see two consecutive strings   array                        key    gt   value        next    gt               Note that the last line may always contain an extra comma  but overlooking one in between is unforgivable  Which is hard to discover without syntax highlighting   Function parameter lists   The same thing for function calls                              myfunc 123   text    and    more     Runaway strings   A common variation are quite simply forgotten string terminators                                     mysql evil  SELECT   FROM stuffs   print   ok              Here PHP complains about two string literals directly following each other  But the real cause is the unclosed previous string of course    See also   Interpolation  double quoted string  of Associative Arrays in PHP PHP - syntax error  unexpected T CONSTANT ENCAPSED STRING Syntax error  unexpected T CONSTANT ENCAPSED STRING in PHP Unexpected T CONSTANT ENCAPSED STRING error in SQL Query

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unexpected      expecting     or      If attempting to use PHP 8 s new named parameter functionality in a version of PHP  lt  8 this error will occur   table- gt string column  Name     Solutions   Upgrade your version of PHP tp PHP 8 8 0 or higher Do not use named parameters  pass the parameters in in the order they are expected

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Unexpected T VARIABLE An  quot unexpected T VARIABLE quot  means that there s a literal  variable name  which doesn t fit into the current expression statement structure    Missing semicolon It most commonly indicates a missing semicolon in the previous line  Variable assignments following a statement are a good indicator where to look             func1     var   1   2        parse error in line  2   String concatenation A frequent mishap are string concatenations with forgotten   operator                                     print  quot Here comes the value   quot    value   Btw  you should prefer string interpolation  basic variables in double quotes  whenever that helps readability  Which avoids these syntax issues   String interpolation is a scripting language core feature  No shame in utilizing it  Ignore any micro-optimization advise about variable   concatenation being faster  It s not    Missing expression operators Of course the same issue can arise in other expressions  for instance arithmetic operations                 print 4   7  var   PHP can t guess here if the variable should have been added  subtracted or compared etc   Lists Same for syntax lists  like in array populations  where the parser also indicates an expected comma   for example                                             var   array  quot 1 quot    gt   val   val2   val3  val4    Or functions parameter lists                                      function myfunc  param1   param2  param3   param4   Equivalently do you see this with list or global statements  or when lacking a   semicolon in a for loop   Class declarations This parser error also occurs in class declarations  You can only assign static constants  not expressions  Thus the parser complains about variables as assigned data   class xyz               var  value     GET  quot input quot     Unmatched   closing curly braces can in particular lead here  If a method is terminated too early  use proper indentation    then a stray variable is commonly misplaced into the class declaration body   Variables after identifiers You can also never have a variable follow an identifier directly                    this- gt myFunc VAR     Btw  this is a common example where the intention was to use variable variables perhaps  In this case a variable property lookup with  this- gt   quot myFunc VAR quot      for example   Take in mind that using variable variables should be the exception  Newcomers often try to use them too casually  even when arrays would be simpler and more appropriate    Missing parentheses after language constructs Hasty typing may lead to forgotten opening or closing parenthesis for if and for and foreach statements             foreach  array as  key     Solution  add the missing opening   between statement and variable                            if   var   pdo query  sql           result        The curly   brace does not open the code block  without closing the if expression with the   closing parenthesis first   Else does not expect conditions        else   var  gt   0   Solution  Remove the conditions from else or use elseif   Need brackets for closure        function   use  var     Solution  Add brackets around  var   Invisible whitespace As mentioned in the reference answer on  quot Invisible stray Unicode quot   such as a non-breaking space   you might also see this error for unsuspecting code like   lt  php                              var   new PDO        It s rather prevalent in the start of files and for copy-and-pasted code  Check with a hexeditor  if your code does not visually appear to contain a syntax issue    See also  Search  unexpected T VARIABLE

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Unexpected      This can be caused by having invalid characters in a variable name  Variables names must follow these rules      Variable names follow the same rules as other labels in PHP  A valid variable name starts with a letter or underscore  followed by any number of letters  numbers  or underscores  As a regular expression  it would be expressed thus    a-zA-Z  x7f- xff  a-zA-Z0-9  x7f- xff

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Unexpected T IF  Unexpected T ELSEIF  Unexpected T ELSE  Unexpected T ENDIF   Conditional control blocks if  elseif and else follow a simple structure  When you encounter a syntax error  it s most likely just invalid block nesting   with missing   curly braces   - or one too many       Missing   or   due to incorrect indentation   Mismatched code braces are common to less well-formatted code such as   if     opt  uniQartz5 8     this- gt check58   or  empty   POST  poree       if   true   echo halp    elseif    z or b  excSmthng False 5 8  elseif  False     If your code looks like this  start afresh  Otherwise it s unfixable to you or anyone else  There s no point in showcasing this on the internet to inquire for help   You will only be able to fix it  if you can visually follow the nested structure and relation of if else conditionals and their   code blocks    Use your IDE to see if they re all paired   if  true         if  false                                  elseif   whatever             if   something2                                          else                                           else                            if  false            a second  if  tree                          else                         elseif  false                Any double     will not just close a branch  but a previous condition structure  Therefore stick with one coding style  don t mix and match in nested if else trees   Apart from consistency here  it turns out helpful to avoid lengthy conditions too  Use temporary variables or functions to avoid unreadable if-expressions   IF cannot be used in expressions   A surprisingly frequent newcomer mistake is trying to use an if statement in an expression  such as a print statement                        echo   lt a href      if   link     example org     echo       Which is invalid of course    You can use a ternary conditional  but beware of readability impacts   echo   lt a href        link    http   yes     http   no       lt  a gt      Otherwise break such output constructs up  use multiple ifs and echos  Better yet  use temporary variables  and place your conditionals before   if   link     href    yes     else    href    no     echo   lt a href   href  gt Link lt  a gt      Defining functions or methods for such cases often makes sense too    Control blocks don t return  results    Now this is less common  but a few coders even try to treat if as if it could return a result    var   if   x     y     true       Which is structurally identical to using if within a string concatenation   expression    But control structures  if   foreach   while  don t have a  result   The literal string  true  would also just be a void statement     You ll have to use an assignment in the code block   if   x     y     var    true       Alternatively  resort to a    ternary comparison    If in If   You cannot nest an if within a condition either                         if   x    true and  if  y    false             Which is obviously redundant  because the and  or or  already allows chaining comparisons   Forgotten   semicolons   Once more  Each control block needs to be a statement  If the previous code piece isn t terminated by a semicolon  then that s a guaranteed syntax error                      var   1   2   3 if  true            Btw  the last line in a       code block needs a semicolon too   Semicolon too early   Now it s probably wrong to blame a particular coding style  as this pitfall is too easy to overlook                 if   x    5          y   7    else                    x   -1          Which happens more often than you might imagine    When you terminate the if    expression with   it will execute a void statement  The   becomes a an empty    of its own  The       block thus is detached from the if  and would always run  So the else no longer had a relation to an open if construct  which is why this would lead to an Unexpected T ELSE syntax error     Which also explains a likewise subtle variation of this syntax error   if   x    x is true       else   something else         Where the   after the code block       terminates the whole if construct  severing the else branch syntactically   Not using code blocks   It s syntactically allowed to omit curly braces       for code blocks in if elseif else branches  Which sadly is a syntax style very common to unversed coders   Under the false assumption this was quicker to type or read    However that s highly likely to trip up the syntax  Sooner or later additional statements will find their way into the if else branches   if  true       x   5  elseif  false       x   6       y   7        else      z   0    But to actually use code blocks  you do have to write       them as such      Even seasoned programmers avoid this braceless syntax  or at least   understand it as an exceptional exception to the rule    Else   Elseif in wrong order   One thing to remind yourself is the conditional order  of course    if   a          else         elseif   b              You can have as many elseifs as you want  but else has to go last  That s just how it is   Class declarations   As mentioned above  you can t have control statements in a class declaration   class xyz       if  true            function   var             You either forgot a function definition  or closed one   too early in such cases   Unexpected T ELSEIF   T ELSE   When mixing PHP and HTML  the closing   for an if elseif must be in the same PHP block  lt  php   gt  as the next elseif else   This will generate an error as the closing   for the if needs to be part of the elseif    lt  php if   x      gt      html  lt  php     gt   lt  php elseif   y      gt      html  lt  php     gt    The correct form  lt  php   elseif    lt  php if   x      gt      html  lt  php   elseif   y      gt      html  lt  php     gt    This is more or less a variation of incorrect indentation - presumably often based on wrong coding intentions      You cannot mash other statements inbetween if and elseif else structural tokens   if  true      echo  in between        elseif  false        gt  text  lt  php        else       Either can only occur in       code blocks  not in between control structure tokens    This wouldn t make sense anyway  It s not like that there was some  undefined  state when PHP jumps between if and else branches  You ll have to make up your mind where print statements belong to   or if they need to be repeated in both branches     Nor can you part an if else between different control structures   foreach   array as  i        if   i            else           There is no syntactic relation between the if and else  The foreach lexical scope ends at    so there s no point for the if structure to continue   T ENDIF   If an unexpected T ENDIF is complained about  you re using the alternative syntax style if    elseif    else    endif   Which you should really think twice about    A common pitfall is confusing the eerily similar   colon for a   semicolon   Covered in  Semicolon too early   As indentation is harder to track in template files  the more when using the alternative syntax - it s plausible your endif  does not match any if   Using   endif   is a doubled if-terminator      While an  unexpected  end  is usually the price for a forgotten closing   curly brace   Assignment vs  comparison   So  this is not a syntax error  but worth mentioning in this context            if   x   true      else   do false        That s not a        comparison  but an   assignment  This is rather subtle  and will easily lead some users to helplessly edit whole condition blocks  Watch out for unintended assignments first - whenver you experience a logic fault   misbeheviour

[php] PHP parse/syntax errors; and how to solve them

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