[thelist] Tip: whitespace in included PHP causes header() calls to fail

[Matt Warden]

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Ian Anderson wrote:
> In PHP, calls to header( "Location: whatever.php" ) were failing
> silently whenever an include file was used to validate the user's
> session data.
> 
> I thought it was something I was doing with cookies or session_start()
> in my included file, but no...
> 
> Turned out there was a space *after* the closing "?> " in the included
> file, which was getting written to the browser as unintentional output
> at the start of the HTML. Of course, calls affecting HTTP header will
> not work if output has already been written to the browser.

This is why you should never use the closing ?> in include files (it's
optional).

- --
Matt Warden
Miami University
Oxford, OH, USA
http://mattwarden.com


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