Re: Error message

The error message told it all. Jochem was correct albiet not in the style I prefer. I had the code in an HTML page after the header. I've been a programmer for 15 years but I'm brand new to PHP. Anyone can make a rookie mistake. Thanks everyone for the help. Everyone was partially correct in assessing the problem. Terry "Eric Gorr" <mailist@ericgorr.net> wrote in message news:506F3853-DD28-4F71-A3DF-F9BB0A32AABF@ericgorr.net...

On Sep 18, 2008, at 5:52 PM, Terry J Daichendt wrote:

I'm pasting this code from the example at php.net and getting these errors. Can anyone determine what I'm doing wrong? <?php // page1.php session_start(); echo 'Welcome to page #1'; $_SESSION['favcolor'] = 'green'; $_SESSION['animal'] = 'cat';

$_SESSION['time']     = time();

// Works if session cookie was accepted echo '<br /><a href="page2.php">page 2</a>'; // Or maybe pass along the session id, if needed echo '<br /><a href="page2.php?' . SID . '">page 2</a>'; ?>

Well, this is weird. When I copied your text and tried it myself, the error I got was: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /Users/ericgorr/ Sites/page1.php on line 9 Now, of course, there is nothing visibly wrong with line 9 ($_SESSION['animal'] = 'cat';). But, when I had my text editor show invisible characters, there were some on that line and line 10. Do you have a text editor that can show invisible characters? On the Mac, the one I really like (and is free) is TextWrangler (http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ ) and has this capability. This may be part of your problem. Once I got rid of the invisible characters, the example worked without any problems. Also, are you certain there are no spaces or anything (even invisible characters) before <?php? Whenever I've gotten a similar error in the past, that was nearly always the problem. You are welcome to compress the text file and send it to me directly so I can see exactly what it contains.