[SOLVED] PHP5 is <?php required or can <? be used

[acctman]

PHP5 is <?php required or can <? be used? I asked this because i'm trying to fix a parsing problem with a template. which was design to only look for <? when processing PHP coding around the html coding

 

 

                    //eval
                        elseif (substr($value,0,2) == '<?' || substr($s,0,5) == '<?php') {  // I edit this to look for <?php
                                $this->act[$key] = 'do_eval';
                                }

-----

    # Eval
        function do_eval() {
                global $names, $en;
                extract($names);
                $ev = substr($this->s,2,-2);   //right here its looking for just <? so thats the problem i'm having
                eval($ev);
                }

[Stephen]

It depends if shorttags is enabled/disabled in your php.ini file.

I haven't messed with php.ini much so you may want to look it up too.

[JasonLewis]

I've never used short tags personally. I like to use <?php and then echo, not this <?=$variable;?> or however it's done.

[nrg_alpha]

It is regarded as bad coding practice to use <? instead of <?php

The reason for this is servers can be configured to disable short open tags (<? format) so as to avoid confusion with short hand XML tags..so by using <?php, you avoid all possible conflicting issues that could arise otherwise.

 

Cheers,

 

NRG

[acctman]

what would be the best way to fix the function do_eval() section of the coding so that it'll detect <? or <?php .

[nrg_alpha]

I would consider using something like str_replace.. so you could have for example:

 

// assign $str to block of code with <? ?> stuff in it..
$str = str_replace("<?", "<?php", $str);

 

or you can simply manually go through and make the changes by hand. If you use an IDE (such as dreamwaver), you can use the find and replace functionality.. that would work just as effectively.