Smarty/PHP errors

Smarty can catch many errors such as missing tag attributes or malformed variable names. If this happens, you will see an error similar to the following:

Warning: Smarty: [in index.tpl line 4]: syntax error: unknown tag - '%blah'
       in /path/to/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1041

Fatal error: Smarty: [in index.tpl line 28]: syntax error: missing section name
       in /path/to/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1041

Smarty shows you the template name, the line number and the error. After that, the error consists of the actual line number in the Smarty class that the error occured.

There are certain errors that Smarty cannot catch, such as missing close tags. These types of errors usually end up in PHP compile-time parsing errors.

Parse error: parse error in /path/to/smarty/templates_c/index.tpl.php on line 75

When you encounter a PHP parsing error, the error line number will correspond to the compiled PHP script, NOT the template itself. Usually you can look at the template and spot the syntax error. Here are some common things to look for: missing close tags for {if}{/if} or {section}{/section} , or syntax of logic within an {if} tag. If you can't find the error, you might have to open the compiled PHP file and go to the line number to figure out where the corresponding error is in the template.

Warning: Smarty error: unable to read resource: "index.tpl" in...
or
Warning: Smarty error: unable to read resource: "site.conf" in...

Fatal error: Smarty error: the $compile_dir 'templates_c' does not exist,
or is not a directory...

Fatal error: Smarty error: unable to write to $compile_dir '....

Fatal error: Smarty error: the $cache_dir 'cache' does not exist,
or is not a directory. in /..

Fatal error: Smarty error: unable to write to $cache_dir '/...

See also debugging, $error_reporting and trigger_error().