phpMyAdmin unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR error

Question

I tried to install phpMyAdmin on a customers webserver. Suddenly I get this error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /homepages/29/d104628985/htdocs/*****-*****/phpMyAdmin/index.php on line 53

I did not change anything in the files of phpMyAdmin. At last I found that somebody deleted the php.ini from the directory. Can be this the reason for the error?

This is the block with line 53 (the sixth line).

require_once 'libraries/RecentTable.class.php';
if ($GLOBALS['is_ajax_request'] && ! empty($_REQUEST['recent_table'])) {
$response = PMA_Response::getInstance();
$response->addJSON(
    'options',
    PMA_RecentTable::getInstance()->getHtmlSelectOption()
);
exit;
}

Answer 1

I suspected this was caused by running a (very) old version of PHP. (It seems PHP 4.2 was installed on the server).

The reported "Parse error" is a fundamental syntax error at compile time. Any other problems such as libraries not being found or errors during object instantiation (at runtime) would have resulted in different errors/warnings. However, there is nothing syntactically wrong with the above code in PHP5.

It would seem that calling a method directly on a function's return value is not supported in PHP4's OOP model*. (In fact, there have been further improvements with respect to the object/arrow operator in PHP 5.4, allowing methods to be called directly on object instantiation.)

_{*Although I can't find specific mention of this as a "new feature" in the PHP5 changelog.}