Question

I am trying to match the $username variable with the current session username (username of logged in account).

I am using the following code but getting a parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM settings WHERE $username = $_SESSION['username']")

Answer 1

Three very obvious errors I see here:

$username in a query will be evaluated by PHP to the value of PHP’s $username variable, which you apparently don’t have, which in turn evaluates it to “”.

$_SESSION['username'] should be quoted (“” or ”), because it’s evidently a string value.

Moreover, I’d rewrite this as:

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM settings WHERE username = '" . $_SESSION['username'] . "'");

That being said, you don’t want to pass any variables from PHP directly to queries without sanitising them first. It’s an injection paradise.

[edit]

Also, seeing your error message the error is probably elsewhere. Unless you’re really missing the ; in the end of your line. Also, that error should give you exact PHP line number where the interpretation error occurred.