Can't figure out why: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE

[leke]

Hi, What's wrong with my code? It's to do with if ( $field1 == null || $field2 == null ) { because if I remove the error check, the code works fine.

<?php

  function generatePassword ($length = 6)
  {
    // start with a blank password
    $password = "";
    $possible = "1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";

    // we refer to the length of $possible a few times, so let's grab it now
    $maxlength = strlen($possible);
    
    // set up a counter for how many characters are in the password so far
    $i = 0; 
    
    // add random characters to $password until $length is reached
    while ($i < $length) { 
      // pick a random character from the possible ones
      $char = substr($possible, mt_rand(0, $maxlength-1), 1);
      // have we already used this character in $password?
        $password .= $char;
        $i++;
    }

    // done!
    return $password;
  }

//echo generatePassword();  


// Gets DB file into an array.
$lines = file('userlist.txt'); // format = email@email.com::Firstname Lastname

// Loop through the array and organise into 2 columns.
foreach ($lines as $line) {
    
    list ($field1, $field2) = split ('::', $line);

    if ( $field1 == null || $field2 == null ) { 
        // Missing data -- Email or Name.
        echo "<br><br>There were empthy fields. Check the list and correct. <br><br>"; 
    } else {
        echo '<br><br>';
        echo "$field1 $field2";
        echo generatePassword();  
        echo '<br />';
    }
}
?>

Thanks in advance

[NogDog]

No parse errors for me when I copy-and-paste your code into my editor. Maybe you have some non-printing/white-space character in there? (You could try copy-and-pasting from here, too, to see if that fixes it, and make sure your editor is saving as a plain ASCII text file, or if needed, UTF-8 without BOM.)

[chrisranjana]

Can't figure out why: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE

You haven't mentioned the line number ?

[leke]

From what I remember, the line was " if ( $field1 == null || $field2 == null ) { ", but I removed this part of the code completely and got it working without error checking.
After reading about the possible formatting problems in this post though, I've just copied the sample code to another file and ran it without error. I guess it was something to do with the file encoding then.

Thanks.