Bug? ... <? ?> and commenting them out

i've the dump feeling there's a bug in the parser (or in my mind =) since i tried to commenting out some code, containing <? ... ?>. The according code was something like ... --- begin //$xml = "<? ?>"; --- end the occured error is ... --- begin Parse error: parse error, unexpected $ in <b>uninteresting</b> on line <b>154</b> --- end ... where 154 the document's last line. # for comment it out either, whereby /* ... */ works fine (as excepted). Seems like the parser doesn't parse the quotes in the statement, but parses the <? .. ?> tags. So <? ... ?> has an higher specifity than the comment itself. PHP Version is 5.0.1. Can anybody reproduce the "problem" (deleting the line fixes it ;o), or find out, wheter ignoring the comment is the desired behaviour? regards, Stefan Bolus