<? ?> tags not working in php 5.3.1

Question

I just installed php 5.3.1 in my linux server and now my old work which i used to write with tags is not working at all..

Please help me out.. How can i resolve this??

Answer 1

It's not recommend you use short tags (<? ?>). You should use the full length tags (<?php ?>). If you want to make your application portable, it's possible that short open tags are not allowed on another server and hence your application will break.

On the other hand, the echo shorthand <?= $var ?> is always available regardless of php.ini settings and will not be deprecated. You can use it instead of <?php echo $var; ?>

As a last resort, to enable short tags, enable the short_open_tag ini directive in one of the following ways (most probably not all of them will work for you):

• set the directive short_open_tag = On in your php.ini (the recommended way);

• call ini_set("short_open_tag", 1); in your code;

• add the following line to your .htaccess file:

  php_value short_open_tag 1

---

And for the default behaviour:

------------------------------------------------ php.ini values : short_open_tag ------------------------------------------------  PHP 4, 5_0  * Default behaviour   : on  * php.ini-dist        : on  * php.ini-recommended : on  PHP 5_1, 5_2:  * Default behaviour   : on  * php.ini-dist        : on  * php.ini-recommended : off  PHP 5_3:  * Default behaviour   : on  * php.ini-development : off  * php.ini-production  : off 

And the reason of discouraging short open tags:

This directive determines whether or not PHP will recognize code between
<? and ?> tags as PHP source which should be processed as such. It's been
recommended for several years that you not use the short tag "short cut" and
instead to use the full <?php and ?> tag combination. With the wide spread use of XML and use of these tags by other languages, the server can become easily
confused and end up parsing the wrong code in the wrong context. But because
this short cut has been a feature for such a long time, it's currently still
supported for backwards compatibility, but we recommend you don't use them.

Note also this declined RFC about short open tags for templates: http://wiki.php.net/rfc/shortags

Answer 2

Looks like you got short_open_tags set to "Off" in your php.ini file. Try setting it to "On" and restart apache.