Getting Parse Error during installation of Drupal 8

Question

I am getting the following error while Installing Drupal 8.

Parse error: parse error, expecting T_CONSTANT_ENCAPSED_STRING' or'('' in var\www\html\core\includes\bootstrap.inc on line 3

When I checked the line number 3 in index.php I saw following two lines.

use Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

I don't know what is the meaning of above two lines and why these are creating the above error.

Answer 1

Hopefully you're not installing Drupal 8 in the hope of using it as a stable website...it's nowhere near ready yet :)

That said, the reason you're getting the error is because the PHP const keyword has only been available for use in the global scope since PHP 5.3. Drupal 8 uses const in the global scope in a lot of places (correctly, as Drupal 8 will require at least PHP 5.3).

My guess is you have PHP 5.2 or lower installed on your server.

Some helpful links:

• const docs
• Drupal change record for using const instead of define()
• Migrating from PHP 5.2.x to PHP 5.3.x

Answer 2

Maybe you are using an unsuported version of PHP for Drupal 8. I tried on PHP 5.3 and got a similar error message.

Althou Drupal 6 runs on PHP 5.x, and 7 runs on 5.2.5, the minimun version of PHP supported for Drupal 8 is PHP 5.5.

Check the requirements here, look specifically for Drupal 8: https://www.drupal.org/requirements