If one defines a class with the member variable:

protected static $bytes = 12582912;

then that’s fine. However if one defines it as:

protected static $bytes  = 12*1024*1024; // 12 MB

then that gives a compile error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '*', expecting ',' or ';'

I know of no other language that I’ve ever programmed (i.e. including BASIC, and C) where you can write a value, but you can’t write an expression.

How broken is that!

Putting spaces around the *, or adding brackets around the whole expression, does not help.

(PHP 5.2.0)

Related posts:

• The method invocation operator, and expressions, in PHP
• perl switch statement limitation
• Generate Javadoc HTML only for public members
• The cycle of programming languages

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 6:27 pm and is filed under PHP. You can subscribe to Adrian's blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.