title: php parse error of '=' in empty textboxes
body: <p>i am new to php and i'm facing the following error in most of the codes.
  instead of output, parse error ( ! ) Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '=' on line 12 is shown. this error is shown in every code.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;html&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
  &lt;title&gt;Check For Blank Text Boxes&lt;/title&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
  &lt;?php 
  $first ="";
  $second = "";
  
  function display_error_message($user_text) {
  
  if ($user_text = = "") {
  print "One or more blank text boxes detected";
  } 
  else {
  print "Text boxes OK";
  }
  }
  
  if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] = = 'POST'){
  
  $first = trim($_POST['first']);
  $second = trim($_POST['second']);
  
  display_error_message($first);
  display_error_message($second);
  }
  
  ?&gt;
  &lt;/body&gt;
  
  &lt;FORM Method = "POST" action ="formFunction.php"&gt;
  
  First Name: &lt;INPUT TYPE = "text" name = "first" value ="&lt;?=$first?&gt;"&gt;
  Surnmae: &lt;INPUT TYPE = "text" name = "second" value ="&lt;?=$second?&gt;"&gt;
  
  &lt;input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"&gt;
  &lt;/FORM&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>