According to a poll here on StackOverflow, NetBeans is the best PHP IDE available. This is all fine and good, except for one thing: It appears to be terrible at checking syntax. I’m sure I must be doing something wrong?
I’ve previously used phpDesigner, which is a great program, but I’ve only got version 2007, and it doesn’t support xDebug (I’d have to buy the new version if I wanted that). So I thought I’d try the much vaunted (and free) NetBeans.
But, as far as I can tell, it’s syntax checking is horrible. For example: Note how the same file is handled by the two different IDEs.
First phpDesigner:
Pretty obvious where the problem is, right?
Then NetBeans:
Here there is nothing but a vague error message at the very bottom of the class, and it’s not even near the function causing the error(!).
So my question is: Is it possible to get better syntax checking in NetBeans? I’m presuming there must be a way, and I’m just being really dumb.
Additionally: If this is not possible in NetBeans, what other free IDEs are available that do have this level of syntax checking?
Thanks for any help.
Some people have suggested Eclipse as a replacement, so I thought I’d test it.
It too correctly recognises the syntax error. (Makes me wonder if NetBeans is bugged.) I may just switch to Eclipse. Are there any other IDEs people think are worth trying?
Well it turns out that it’s a bug in NetBeans. Here’s the details of the bug:
http://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=168350
Update: It’s been fixed in NetBeans 7.0.