Date: 08/29/07 (PHP Community)    Keywords: php, mysql, html, sql, apache

I've wrecked my setups enough times to be a pro at getting PHP, Apache, MySQL and Windows XP to all play together nicely. However, this time I'm running into a strange problem. I've got PHP 5.2.3 and Apache 2.0.59. Apache runs fine, PHP seems to run fine, phpinfo() shows everything as it should be. When I try to load anything that seems to have more than a single line in it, it doesn't look like it's parsing anything. I get a lot of broken bits of code showing on the screen. Things like '>' when used as operators are being parsed as HTML tags. These are scripts that ran fine on Sunday with Apache 1.0.3 and PHP 4.whatever. I'm having trouble deciphering exactly what it's doing or why, but it's obvious it's not working. I'm at an end here, for now. Anyone have any suggestions?

EDIT: Found it after staring at a script for half an hour. Know what it was? From PHP.INI:

short_open_tag = On

That was set to off. Of course I'm lazy and never actually type to start a script, however, my editor sometimes puts that in for me, which is why some scripts worked. I'd read about this setting, but never thought it might apply to me.