<? ?> tags not working in php 5.3.1

php, php-shorttags

Solution

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

Problem

Original source

Related problems

• PHP echo vs PHP short echo tags