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Comment by jwong_ | Hacker News Reader

After registering, I'm seeing this:

[phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions_messenger.php on line 506: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable

Probably best to turn off debugging statements.

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Hmm, interesting. I'll take a look, thanks for letting me know.

Just so I'm clear, this happened immediately after registering? Or did you do anything else that triggered this?

That is happening because you are running PHP 7.2. In that file $this->extra_headers is initialized as non-countable NULL. Basically phpBB needs to update their code base to support newer versions of PHP. A quick fix would be to change "var ... $extra_headers" at the top of the file to "protected $extra_headers = [];".

It's probably a safe assumption that they use a similar style elsewhere though, so probably better to just change PHP version rather than edit the source files?

I could be wrong, (I'm a Python guy - not PHP), just seems a safe assumption that it's likely not the only spot.

> so probably better to just change PHP version rather than edit the source files?

NO.

It's better to improve the code than roll back to an older and less secure version of the language.

This is PHP we're talking about, after all.

I agree with your logic. Best to just do what jwong_ said and disable warnings.

A quicker fix for a brand new forum would be to not use some janky old PHP codebase.

dchuk has put their money where their mouth is and have made their own decisions wrt platform as is their right.

Put up or shutup.

Thanks!

Thanks for detailing this, I'll get it fixed tonight.

To follow up: I think I fixed this, but I don’t have a good way to test. So please let me know if there are other things to investigate

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