When you’ve stopped scratching your head or falling about laughing and calling your mates in to view the screen (‘cos you can’t pronounce the words) just make sure that all your variables have their $s in tact!
Googling for it will come up with interesting etymology when you have the time.
Silver bells, and cockle shells 
May 1, 2008 at 5:24 am
Paamayim Nekudotaim means dobule colon – ::
May 1, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Thanks Shai, now everyone can see the meaning here too! I believe it is from the Hebrew – because of where php was mostly developed?
I have never had cause to use a :: in my code but I sometimes forget the $ on a variable!
September 30, 2008 at 3:35 am
Hah, I just HAD to google this one (hence my arriving here), holy crap talk about ridiculous errors.
It actually *was* the missing ‘$’ too, lol.
October 2, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Yes – I’ve found lots of sites that explain what it means… but none that say “fix the $s”, which was what I needed.
Thanks, Mary!
November 11, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Haha, I had too google this one too, “expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM”
wtf I though php was playing with me, but I was missing the a “$”
February 2, 2010 at 4:35 am
Wow, mine wound up being the missing $ as well, but I do have to admit that this is the funniest error I’ve ever run up on whilst coding in PHP.
April 23, 2010 at 4:08 pm
From the founder of WordPress.com, thank you for this. 🙂
October 4, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Using
if(!isset(session_start)){…
will throw this error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘)’, expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM in path/to/file.php on line x
July 19, 2011 at 7:41 am
Gosh how easy would it be for Hebrew people who wouldn’t have to google for what that error means.:)
November 11, 2011 at 3:07 pm
I got it using isset() instead of defined() on a constant haha
November 14, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Thanks!
Developer at CNET
December 1, 2011 at 10:34 am
Thanks
December 10, 2011 at 7:33 pm
PHP is waxing so poetic today, I got the “expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM” and “Fatal Flex Scanner Internal Error” within one exciting half-hour.
February 21, 2012 at 10:05 am
I also got this error when calling empty() with a constant. Needed to change it to CONSTANT_NAME == ”
April 17, 2012 at 6:38 pm
I got this hebrew using an ampersand instead of a dollar sign, I need new fingers and new eyes
March 12, 2013 at 3:59 am
i created a code named DataObject.class.php
i found
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_DOUBLE_ARROW, expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM
May 30, 2013 at 12:16 pm
LOL
>> Coding late one night
>> See this error
>> Think my computer changed language
I got this error, not due to a missing $ but because of this;
unset(CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS);
Luckily php gave me a line number in the error 🙂
August 11, 2015 at 9:17 am
Thanks, missed $ as well
January 6, 2018 at 7:18 pm
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