title: Laravel 4 blade templates causing FatalErrorException?
body: <p>I'm getting an unexplained FatalErrorException when trying to implement a simple page layout using blade templating. I'm not sure if it's something I'm doing wrong or Laravel is. I'm following the tutorial on L4's documentation about Templating and my code seems to follow it. Here's my code.</p>
  
  <p>app/routes.php:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  Route::get('/', 'HomeController@showWelcome');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>app/views/home/welcome.blade.php:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@extends('layouts.default')
  @section('content')
    &lt;h1&gt;Hello World!&lt;/h1&gt;
  @stop
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>app/views/layouts/default.blade.php:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!doctype html&gt;
  &lt;html&gt;
    &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;The Big Bad Barn (2013)&lt;/title&gt;
    &lt;/head&gt;
    &lt;body&gt;
      &lt;div&gt;
        @yield('content')
      &lt;/div&gt;
    &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>app/controllers/HomeController.php:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  class HomeController extends BaseController {
    protected $layout = 'layouts.default';
    public function showWelcome()
    {
      $this-&gt;layout-&gt;content = View::make('home.welcome');
    }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Laravel just throws a FatalErrorException. The output error page says "syntax error, unexpected '?'". The file blade is generating inside the storage/views directory has PHP where the 
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php echo $__env-&gt;make('layouts.default')
  
  &lt;?php $__env-&gt;startSection('content', array_except(get_defined_vars(), array('__data', '__path')))-&gt;render(); ?&gt;; ?&gt;
  &lt;h1&gt;Hello World!&lt;/h1&gt;
  &lt;?php $__env-&gt;stopSection(); ?&gt;
  </code></pre>