php issue not recognising equals sign - confused as it works everywhere else

[eggorigi]

for some reason the equal sign is unrecognized.. is it that php interpreter is not activated??

---------------------------------------------------

index.php begins with

<?php
include("defines.php");
....

error is
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '=' in /home/xxxxxxxx/public_html/defines.php on line 2

defines.php line 1 and 2 follow:

<?php
$debug = FALSE;

 

[eggorigi]

this is an assignment and not a test for equality

 

[lylex10h]

I just checked my WordPress wp-config.php file and it contains the following code:

$table_prefix  = 'mytableprefix_';

My website works. I'm not a programmer.

 

[eggorigi]

thanks for your input
issue now resolved
for some reason the file was saved in a strange format (big5 ??)
I just resaved it in utf-8 format and all good again