PHP is displaying my source code?

Question

I just upgraded to php5.3 and when I execute:

php myfile.php

I see the source code for myfile.php.

Any idea why this is happening? I've never seen anything like it before!

Answer 1

In 5.3

short_open_tag

is disabled by default. So if you use

<? ?> 

instead of

<?php ?> 

it can cause issues in the future (provided you just re enable the flag in php.ini). From what I have read they are still debating removal from 6.

Answer 2

Are you sure you didn't forget the opening PHP tag at the begining of the file ?

ie :

<?php
echo "hello, world!";

(Note I used "full" open tags ; ie "<?php", and not short open tags "<?" -- maybe you used short open tags, and those are disabled ? If I remember correctly, they are disabled by default, in PHP 5.3)

and not :

echo "hello, world!";

(If that doesn't help : can you post a short code sample that reproduces the problem ?)