php not reporting errors even though E_ALL is on

Question

To make sure I even set this in the php file;

ini_set("display_errors","1");
ERROR_REPORTING(E_ALL);

But, as an example, when I accidentally miss a } the screen stays white; no error is shown. When I use the exact same php file on a shared webhost, the error is correctly shown.

php.ini is set to E_ALL | E_STRICT

php memory limit is set to 2k

timeout is set to 0 (infinite)

Anyone have a clue? I use lighttpd on debian 6.

Answer 1

PHP doesn't (can't) run the script if you hit a parsing error (like a misplaced bracket).

You can run php -d display_errors=On -l "script.php" to see parsing errors from the command line.

Because the script is never evaluated, your functions to change the error reporting level will never run. You'll need to set those flags via .htaccess or php.ini for them to be available during parsing.