On Sat, 10 May 2008 15:48:00 -0400, sheldonlg <sheldonlg> wrote:

>>>> Gilles Ganault wrote:
>>>>> Hello
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there a tool on Linux/FreeBSD that can parse a PHP script to
>>>>> make
>>>>> sure there's no compile-time issues?
>>>> You will never have a compile-time error with PHP since PHP is a
>>>> script and, hence, doesn't compile. Perhaps you mean run-time issues?
>>>
>>> As far as I understand PHP does in fact first compile the script to
>>> byte-code
>>> and then run it... Surely if the code has syntax errors it would
>>> result to
>>> compile time error, right?
>>>
>>
>> No, Gilles is correct. PHP is not compiled. It is interpreted. A big
>> difference. And no, syntax errors are not considered compile-time errors.
>>
>> Java, OTOH, is compiled to byte code.
>>
>
>Jerry, that was me -- not Gilles -- who said it....but thanks for
>agreeing. Robin, by compile time we mean generating code without
>running the code. That is what we mean by a differentiation between
>compile time errors and run time errors. The former does syntax
>checking, etc. and the bugs are an order of magnitude easier to find
>than run time bugs.
>An interpreted language, like PHP, doesn't have a
>compiler.

Ah yes, with this definition you are right under regular php execution -
although there is exception: When using php accelerator software there is the
difference that php bytecode is cached and after that re-compiled only if
source is modified after last runtime compiling. Technically however it is
still incorrect to say that PHP does not have a compiler - like several other
interpreted languages it has a built-in runtime compiler. It doesnt however
need compiling before running and there is no separate compiler to produce
bytecode files.

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