Question

$reset_Array=(); // I forgot to put the keyword "array"

Correct way should be

$rest_Array= array(); 

Why does Apache crash when I try to execute wrong code.

What is happening internally?

Answer 1

I don’t think that Apache crashes. What happens is your PHP execution aborts, resulting in you seeing 500 Internal server error. This is due to the fact that syntax

$reset_Array=();

is invalid in PHP. PHP is trying to parse this line and encounters an error. It returns this error and the execution aborts. Try the following: put in a new file test.php the following:

<?php

$reset_Array=();

?>

And execute this with a command-line interpreter with -l parameter (lint – syntax checking):

$ php -l test.php

You will get the following error:

$ php -l publish/test.php 
PHP Parse error:  parse error in test.php on line 3
Errors parsing test.php

Once PHP encounters this error, it cannot continue executing the script, because it cannot parse it. Hence you receive an error when you try executing it under Apache.

P.S. The above commands are shown from unix/linux shell. If you are running under windows, then your prompt may be something like C:\Documents > instead of $.