Question

I have a custom WordPress plugin that works fine on my local dev machine, but triggers an error on the production server.

The function:

function _iniloader_get_dirs($dir) {
        $dirs = array_filter(scandir($dir), function ($item) use ($dir) {
            return (is_dir($dir.'/'.$item) && $item != "." && $item != "..");
        });
        // Use array_values to reset the array keys:
        return array_values($dirs);
}

The error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_FUNCTION in (in plugin) on
line 30

Line 30 is the second line of the function.

My local MAMP server = PHP Version 5.3.6
Linux production server = PHP Version 5.3.5

Does anyone have an idea what the issue could be, and why it would show up in one environment but not the other?

---

UPDATE:

I just noticed that, if I put this function in a regular PHP file on the production box, it executes fine- so it’s only triggering the error when it’s part of the WordPress plugin, which makes even less sense to me…

Answer 1

Likely it’s your usage of Closures.

These became available in PHP > 5.3. Your Production server is either not running 5.3 or a minor version that might be buggy.

Refactor the use clause and I imagine it will run on both environments.