I am a PHP programmer since 12 years now, but i run out of my possibilities now. I never had such issue, and i dont know, what's going wrong there.
It is really simply. I want to declare the number 84367 as a variable.
I minimized my script to 1 line, in a new php file, but.. what is going wrong?!
<?php
$x = "84367";
?>
results in
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '' (T_STRING) in C:\xampp\htdocs\me7dtc\test.php on line 2
Why ?
Simple. Your code contains a unicode character.
Copy and paste this exactly as shown:
<?php
// $x = "84367";
^ unicode hidden character between the last quote and the semi-colon.
$x = "84367";
?>
The commented line is the one that contains the unicode character.
‬ character between the last quote and the semi-colon.A.k.a.: "POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING".
Consult the following links on this:
This would likely not have shown it when encoded/editing under an UTF-8 environment, but will in ANSI.
In an ANSI encoded environment, it would have shown ‬ immediately following the last quote.
More precisely:
<?php
$x = "84367"‬;
?>
You more than likely were under an UTF-8 coding environment where it is needed for you, but were unable to see it. You could temporarily convert your file to ANSI then switch back to UTF-8 in order to pick up on (hidden) characters such as these.