Drupal-Help needed-A newbie

[aileia]

I am using drupal 4.7x.

I write the following code in the blog entry

<?php

$life=42;

function meaningOfLife() {

global $life;

  print "The meaning of life is $life<br />";

}

meaningOfLife();

 

?>

 

and then select php code as input format.

The result turn out to be

 

The meaning of life is

 

which is wrong, apparently, what i want is

 

The meaning of life is 42.

 

This is an example given in php.net so it should be correct. Moreover since the function is executed, it confirms I installed php. However I can't define the variable $life in the function. It is printing the text, so it is calling the function however it is not calling the variable. Can anyone tell me what went wrong?

 

[Cognito]

try and echo the line rather then print it?

[aileia]

Hi Cognito,

I tried it with echo, it gives the same thing, I can't define the variable in the function.

[Cognito]

My bad noticed another mistake -

 

replace this

$life=42;

 

 

with this

$life = '42';

[aileia]

No, it doesn't change anything. Actually, doesn't it necessary for only string inputs, for numbers don't we just write it without ".

[Cognito]

I should of just tested your code first

Just put that code on my dev system here and it works perfectly fine, must be something to do with the drupal system some how overriding your value......

[aileia]

thanks, cognito. Do you know drupal?

[Cognito]

Not enough to pin point whats causing it mate sorry

Can I suggest you add the code to a test.php file on your server and make sure that works ? as long as that works you can be 100% sure its drupal having some effect.

If not it could be something to do with your php.ini setup.

[trq]

globals are bad at the best of times, pass this variable into your function. eg;

 

<?php
$life=42;
function meaningOfLife($v) {
   print "The meaning of life is $v";
}
meaningOfLife();

?>

 

I would assume drupal uses eval or something to evaluate this code, and obviously globals won't work for whatever reason.

 

As for this....

My bad noticed another mistake -

 

replace this

$life=42;

 

 

with this

$life = '42';

 

Integers are not to be quoted.

[aileia]

Thanks cognito, I found the solution in drupal's forum, which states globals should be also defined in the main part of the php code. Then it worked fine. Thank you for your help.

[deadimp]

To elaborate, the eval() call that thorpe was talking about is most likely made inside of a function scope, meaning that $life would be a local variable to that function and wouldn't be a global, as you found out.