Error Reporting - can't turn Notices off!

[groovygarden]

Hi, I hope someone can tell me what (hopefully really obvious thing) I'm doing wrong. I have a page results.php which processes results from a form. This is a bit of the code:

  if (!$searchtype || !$searchterm)
  {
     echo "You have not entered search details.  Please go back and try again.";
     exit;
  }

Yesterday I was getting the following notice:

Notice: Undefined variable: searchterm
Notice: Undefined variable: searchtype

which was fair enough because I had error reporting set to E_ALL. But I've changed error reporting to

error_reporting  = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE

in php.ini and I'm still getting the notice.... Is there something else I need to do?

 

[skiflyer]

Two approaches, depending on exactly what you're accomplishing here... do searchtype and searchterm equal true and false or do you just want to know if they're set?...

if (!@$searchtype || !@$searchterm)
{
blah blah
}

or

if (!isset($searchtype)) {
$searchtype = false;
}
if (!isset($searchterm)) {
$searchterm = false;
}
if (!$searchtype || !$searchterm)
{
blah blah
}

-Rob

 

[sleipnir214]

groovygarden:

It is extraordinarily bad programming practice to just turn off offending script errors rather than programming your way around them. It's the ethical equivalent of slapping a coat of paint on a piece of rotten wood.

skiflyer has hit the nail on the head in his second piece of advice. The first is just a way of doing locally what you have done globally. I recommend the use of the "@" error supression mechanism only in situations where you are trapping and handling reporting of all errors yourself. Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[PAOwen]

So, at the end of the day what is the industry recognised process with regard to initialising variables ? Is it :-

i) turn off E_NOTICE
ii) initialise variables ie $somevar = "";
iii) use isset() as per 'groovygarden' on Jan 30, 2003

Bearing in mind that with ii) & iii) there could be numerous variables to initialise (or are there not )

Thanks and Regards,

 

[sleipnir214]

Turning off E_NOTICE is the worst of all the ideas -- the easiest to implement, but the worst idea. It is an inadequate substitute for good error-handling.

As far as I know, there is no industry-recognized standard because languages differ too much in how they handle variables. For example, c doesn't care that you've initialized it, only that you have declared it. perl, unless you use the "use strict" pragma, doesn't care one way or the other.

In my code, I use a combination of methods 2 and 3. Any variable I am going to instantiate and use in my code, I initialize. Any variable that may or may not exist (like elements of $_POST or $_GET) I check with isset() or array_key_exists().

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[PAOwen]

Sleipnir214,

Many thanks for your advice, even if it does up the work involved

Regards