herb miller

4. We know you're really busy,
you have a full work load
but please try to remember...
"Are you sure you changed the code?"

Summary

Using a Windows editor against an ftp’ed file can lead to unexpected results!

Background

I recently edited a file using FileZilla to make a one line change to undo an erroneous fix to one of my plugins ( oik ). Rather than simply change the line in error, I decided to comment it out using a double slash comment then add the replacement line.

It looked like I’d made the right change. But it wasn’t fixing the problem. The same code change was working locally, but it wasn’t making any difference on the real website.

I thought that perhaps there was some other change that I’d made locally which wasn’t duplicated on the server. So I extracted the code and ran a file compare. Then it became obvious.

I thought I’d edited the file to create a single double slash comment for the original line and added a new line. But I hadn’t noticed that the file I was editing had Unix line endings, so the new line wasn’t really a new line. Had I simply changed the original line this problem would not have occurred.

Reproducing the problem

Having fixed the problem I edited the file again. This time the Unix line endings had been fixed. So I reproduced the problem in another file.

1. Choose a file in FileZilla
2. Select View/Edit
3. Change the file
4. Save to the server
5. Edit the file in WordPress plugin editor – to show it’s not right
6. Edit the file again using FileZilla

Moral of the story

Check that the code change that you made is really the change you intended to make.

See also

• Problem Solving – Top 10 questions to ask when something doesn’t work
• Local development
• oik