Hosting Provider Upgraded Php To Latest. Site Delivers Errors. Please Help.

[hwaveblue]

Hi there,

 

my hosting provider upgraded PHP yesterday to latest and now the site is showing these kinds of errors:

 

Warning: preg_match() [function.preg-match]: Delimiter must not be alphanumeric or backslash in /home/USERNAME/public_html/SCRIPT_FOLDER/include/misc.inc.php on line 309

 

Warning: preg_replace() [function.preg-replace]: No ending delimiter ';' found in /home/USERNAME/public_html/SCRIPT_FOLDER/include/misc.inc.php on line 121

 

The developer is no longer reachable and the site is few years old. I tried to play with the code but I have no php experience and I might have broken more than fixed, I used http://php.net/manual/en/migration53.deprecated.php as refference, but to no success.

 

Can anyone here help please?

 

I am attaching the misc.inc.php file if this is something that is to be fixed only modofying stuff in this file?

 

Thanks!

misc.inc.txt

[scootstah]

The file you attached isn't representative of the errors you have. There is no preg_match or preg_replace on lines 309 or 121.

 

Most likely you didn't add delimiters to your regular expressions, since the ereg_* functions don't need them.

[ManiacDan]

Your host upgraded from a language version which supports the ereg family of functions to a version which does not. They also "helpfully" added a module which replaces any existing calls to ereg with calls to the preg family of functions.

 

Your code on those lines is wrong. Line 121 should be:

$output = str_replace(";", "", $output);

 

Line 309 should be:

if ($count % 10 == 0 ) {

 

This code is awful, neither of these lines even needed to be a regular exp<b></b>ression.

 

Any line which contains "ereg" must be replaced by something.

 

Scoot: The host seems to be doing real-time aliasing between ereg and preg since ereg is gone.

Edited October 5, 2012 by ManiacDan

[scootstah]

Scoot: The host seems to be doing real-time aliasing between ereg and preg since ereg is gone.

 

That is a terrible idea.

[ManiacDan]

No kidding. But it keeps fatal errors out of their logs, presumably they log fatal errors only. Aliasing all the missing functions (missing functions are a fatal error) to similar-but-not-working functions stops them from filling their logs with "FATAL ERROR: Customer has not updated their script in 6 years" over and over until the server goes down.

[Christian F.]

Oh, my... I'm glad none of my hosts have pulled such a stunt. Hopefully it's possible to turn the module off, and have it stay off forever.

While I do understand the reasoning behind keeping the error logs down to size, they really should have limited the log file's size instead. Using a third party module to mess with the internal workings of a programming language like this, in order to cut down on the number of errors reported (and thus logged), is no excuse for not properly configuring the error log handler.

 

hwaveblue: I've sent you a PM regarding this issue, in case you haven't seen it yet.