Bug #11447: Switch statement sensible for white-space

From: per.persson@gnosjo.pp.se Operating system: Linux (RedHat 6.2) PHP version: 4.0.4pl1 PHP Bug Type: Scripting Engine problem Bug description: Switch statement sensible for white-space The following script gave a parse error: <? switch($var): ?> <? case "alpha": ?> <p>Alpha</p> <? break; ?> <!-- ... --> <? endswitch; ?> Parse error: parse error, expecting T_CASE' or T_DEFAULT' or `'}'' in <my-path>/bug.php on line 2 First I thought that this was really a bug, but then, while typing this report I realized that non-PHP-mode characters (like the two spaces) probably are converted to an "echo" instruction, so the PHP-parser sees something like the following code: switch($var): echo ' '; case "alpha": echo '<p>Alpha</p>'; break; endswitch; The parser doesn't expect anything (but PHP-mode white-space) to come between the ':' on line 1 and 'case' on line 3 and therefore reports parse error. Right? For the sake of "pretty-scripting", I would like this to change, but at the same time, now that I understand why the parser complains, I'm not sure if it should be changed... -- Edit Bug report at: http://bugs.php.net/?id=11447&edit=1