* * * * *
                                        
                    Why does this not surprise me about PHP?
                                        
I'm not sure if it's a PHP 5x thing, or if the PHP configuration was a bit
more strict, but when I tested “Project: Leaflet [1]” on another server with
PHP 5 (the development server is currently at PHP 4) I received a series of
errors:

> Notice: Undefined index: order in
> XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.php on line
> 382
> 

I did some searching, and I found two fixes. One, the following line:

> error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);
> 

Or I can fix each instance, from:

> if (isset($_POST['blah'] == 'foo') ... 
> 

to

> if (isset($_POST['blah']) && ($_POST['blah'] == 'foo')) ...
> 

And I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it's keeping
muddleheaded programmers [2] honest, forcing them to actually think for a
change. On the other hand, it sure is annoying having to check almost all
variable references to see if the variable is defined or not …

Sigh.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2008/02/05.1
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/06/05.1

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.