PHP code not outputting properly

Question

I'm working with PHP and HTML, but I have an issue popping up whenever I write some PHP code. An example of this is as follows:

<?php
echo "<h2>Hello?</h2>";
$var = 5;
echo "You have $var minutes to go.";
?>

What this ends up outputting on screen is:

Hello?"; $var = 5; echo "You have $var minutes to go."; ?>

But what I want to happen is this: Hello? You have 5 minutes to go.

Is there something I'm forgetting to do? It doesn't seem to matter whether or not I add the HTML preamble, or if I put a tag like

around the second echo line. Does anyone have any advice?

EDIT: Apparently I have failed to parse PHP correctly. This computer is new and I have XAMPP installed on it, but nothing else. Did I miss something I needed in order to use PHP?

• Shankar Narayana Damodaran: I get the output. ` Hello? You have 5 minutes to go.`
• WebNovice: It doesn't print the first echo ?
• WebNovice: Try removing the ? and check again and see what it outputs. Mean the ? after Hello. Maybe it is closing your php tag or something
• Michael Berkowski: Are you actually running this on a web server, or just attempting to open a .php file in a local browser?
• Sam Ofloinn: Michael Berkowski, at the moment it's just on my local computer.

Answer 1

That sounds like if the php code wasn't interpreted.

Make sure to have the code in a file with a filename ending with .php and that PHP is installed/enabled on your server.

• WebNovice: If it isn't interpreted, how come the <?php echo part is not printed out on the screen?
• bwoebi: @WebNovice this part is interpreted as a html tag. That's why it isn't visible in browser (you'll find it in source code)
• user2489311: 5 upvotes for this? :O, Ive posted upvotes longer then my arm :(
• Sam Ofloinn: Thanks for that. The file is saved and uploaded as a .php file. To be precise, it's: file:///C:/my_folder/test.php I may have forgotten to install something first. This is a new computer I am working with, and I just set up XAMPP and Notepad++.
• bwoebi: @SamOfloinn Then you should make attention to access the file via xampp and not directly via the file system. (something that begins with http://localhost/...)

Answer 2

The PHP isn't being parsed properly.

• Make sure you are saving your files as .php
• If you are running this locally through WAMP the make sure to use localhost in your URL because if your URL looks like this file:///C:/wamp/www/index.php then that is incorrect.
• I think CakePHP uses .ctp files so that could also be an issue
• You can setup Apache to interpret any file extension as PHP

Answer 3

make php and html different.so things become much easier. try like this:

<h2>Hello?</h2>
<?php
$var = 5;
?>
You have <?php echo $var;?> minutes to go.

• bwoebi: this really isn't the answer to the question; that's just a coding style advice.