Objective 5: Local debugging in PHPEclipse 1.1.8 in Eclipse 3.1.2 for PHP 5.1.2 using the DBG debugger

• Observation 1:The appropriate php interpreter has to be php-cgi.exe and not php.exe
• Observation 2:The debugger generates different $_SERVER variable than otherwise anticipated. In order for my script to run properly, I needed $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"] which was not initialized within the debugger, nor was $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"] and while the script was anticipating something like /folder/subfolder/page.php for $_SERVER["PHP_SELF"] the debugger set PHP_SELF to something like c:\\directory\\subdir\\folder\\subfolder\\page.php. I could override HTTP_HOST and HTTP_USER_AGENT by presetting them under Environment variables prior to initiating the debugger. Presetting PHP_SELF was of no use. The only way I could override the debugger setting was by setting a breakpoint immediately after the PHP_SELF variable was accessed, and then selecting the appropriate expression under the Variables tab of the debugger, and changing its value.

Objective 6: Fix <?=$SomeVariable?> so that it works for my online webpages.

• I tried to using the ini_set('short_open_tag', 'On') which didn't correct the problem. Turns out, according to my research, since there are cases where the remote server still won't accept the open tag format. So, I had to search and replace <?= with <?php echo_ and ?> with ; ?>.

Objective 7: Resolve and Fix WARNING: include(../../include-folder/somefile.php) [<a href='function.include'>function.include</a>]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in line ... followed by a string of other warning errors such as: WARNING: include() [<a href='function.include'>function.include</a>]: Failed opening '../../includes-folder/somefile.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php') ... . especially annoying since the offending file seems ok.

• One reason lies in the URI containing containing more than one forward slash such as http://www.website.com//subdirectory/webpage.php. To correct, use ltrim($_SERVER['PHP_SELF'], '/') and redirect back to the rectified URI. Cautionarly Note! Make sure the redirect hasn't inadvertanttly duplicated the first subdirectory as in the example above. Redirect to the absolute and not the relative address.
• Another is the result of using <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;URL=gosomewhereelse.ext" /> rather than the php function header("Location: gosomewhereelse.ext"); exit(); -- NOTE! The header function has to appear before anything else is written to the file, or else you get a 'header already called' error.

Objective 8: Highlight strings not within tags

• Observation: I could not find a regular expression to easily search and replace strings not contained within anchors, or other tags. Searching the net yielded nothing other than a post at http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/1212.htm which gave me the idea for the HiliteSpecial ($haystack, $search, $replace=false, $tags=false) function below.
  
  NOTE!
  • $tags is used for future expansion for when search and replace within tags will be needed.
  • $replace is set to false here, also for future purposes, but for now, the function call:
    
    $excerpt=HiliteSpecial($some_string, $lookforthis, "<span class=\"tobehighlighted\">$lookforthis</span>", true); ... established the replacement I needed
  • HiliteSpecial's regular expression identifies text strings outside of any tags. The preg_match_all gathers the strings into the $strings variable.
    • Observation A: Without '(int)' in it, the in_array() function didn't work as expected.
    • Observation B: I read that strpos() is faster than strstr(). There is a flaw in using it in a conditional statement, however. When I used it, it failed to recognize the $search value when it in fact started from '0'. (Damn! Now I have to go back and check my other scripts.)

        function HiliteSpecial ($haystack, $search, $replace=false, $tags=false) {
         if ($temp=preg_match_all('/(?<=^|>)[^><]+?(?=<|$)/', $haystack, $strings) && in_array((int) $search, $strings[0]) && $tags) {
          $strings=$strings[0];
          foreach ($strings as $count=>$var) {
           if (strstr($var, $search)) $haystack=str_replace($var, str_replace($search, $replace, $var), $haystack);
          }
          return $haystack;
         } else return preg_replace("/$search/i", $replace, $haystack);
        } // end HiliteSpecial
        

Objective 9: Determine what causes Error in my_thread_global_end(): 1 threads didn't exit\r. Internet searches on what might be causing this, and how to fix it, at first seemed futile. Eventually at PHP Bug #41350, I did find what I needed to seemingly resolve it. (See Observation B:, below)

• Observation A: I had discovered that the error resulted from within the script below:
  

          1 ob_start();
          2 $string = eval("?>".$string);
          3 $string = ob_get_contents();
          4 ob_end_clean();
        

  The error occurred on line 2 since the string being evaluated contained "<?php if (!$ThisVariable) { ?> some normal text" but the closing tag (<?php } ?>) was missing. Once I resovled that problem, I stopped getting the
• Observation B: I had recently integrated CURL in with PHP 5.2.4. A test I ran proved the error unrelated to MySQL. Still, the solution for me was to download the libmysql.dll, unzip it and overwrite the libmysql.dll existing in the PHP program folder.