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Stopping syntax error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_FUNCTION

By admin | July 19, 2008

If you’ve ever been stumped by “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_FUNCTION”, you will know that this is a very difficult bug to track. Fortunately, we have found the error for you.

This error message is very misleading, because your actual problem is that you have an extra semi-colon at the end of your functions, like the one below (see line 12):

<?php
// Demo Syntax Error Example
// (C)Copyright 2008 Compdigitec
// Released under GPL

class Demo {
     var $a;
     var $b;

     function problem_here() {
          $this->$a = 'Hello World!';
     }; # <-- That one
};
?>

Now, the above code looks good, but when you try to run it it PHP spits out the following parse error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_FUNCTION in *.php on line *

So, to fix it, simply remove the offending semi-colon at the end of your functions. Hope this helped anyone who got stuck with this misleading PHP error.

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Topics: PHP | 10 Comments »

10 Responses to “Stopping syntax error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_FUNCTION”

  1. egodi Says:
    August 27th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    mine is
    PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting T_FUNCTION in C:\\\test\file.php on line 86

  2. Gregor Says:
    September 26th, 2009 at 4:15 am

    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_FUNCTION on lin 519.

    The line 519 is just ?>

    what can I do?

  3. admin Says:
    September 27th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    @Gregor:

    Did you by accident put in an extra semi-colon somewhere in your code before the “?>”?

  4. Gregor Says:
    September 28th, 2009 at 5:22 am

    I checked the whole php file, no ; before ?>. Is it possible to send you the (searchajax).php file?

    This are some of the lines of the code:

    ?>

    <input value=" ” class=”form2_submit” type=”submit”>

    (<- line 519)

  5. Asdf Says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 2:01 pm

    Someone said
    “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_FUNCTION on lin 519.
    The line 519 is just ?>”

    The same error to me. It was a } missing at the end, just before ?>. It was something like..

    It was a deletion error.

  6. aeou Says:
    December 23rd, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    the following snippet will output the same message (only when inside a class method, not in or out of a procedural function)

    class Foo {
    public function foo() {
    if ($a) {
    echo ‘foo’;
    if ($b) {
    echo ‘bar’;
    }
    }
    }

  7. grobemo Says:
    April 6th, 2010 at 10:59 pm

    Thanks! This helped me fix this otherwise puzzling bug.

    If you’re getting the “unexpected $end, expecting T_FUNCTION” variation (as egodi does above), it may be because you’ve forgotten to close the class declaration. Try adding a final } after your last method declaration (i.e., after your last function).

  8. Michael Boggess Says:
    April 20th, 2010 at 10:57 pm

    I had this error buy it ended up I did not close an if block mid way through the class. Watch out for that stuff.

  9. Alex Says:
    July 2nd, 2010 at 10:12 am

    Thanks Asdf.
    Just put a { to the end.

  10. KGF2009 Says:
    July 12th, 2010 at 1:33 am

    Though I’m sure this is rare, but it could happen if you declare a lot of functions in your class, this error will also be thrown if the class itself is not closed.

Comments