title: Upgrading Laravel 5.2 to 5.3 with hidden comment code
body: <p>I am updating a site from Laravel 5.2 to (eventually) 5.7 that was coded by someone else.</p>
  
  <p>Currently I having an issue with this type of code in a blade file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{{-- */ $hidden = 'hidden' /* --}}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That creates a variable that is used in the file itself like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;div class="col-xs-2 {{$hidden}}" id="person1div"&gt;
      &amp;nbsp;
  &lt;/div&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That seems to work fine in Laravel 5.2 but in 5.3 I get the error message:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Undefined variable: hidden
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I could change the code to </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php $hidden = 'hidden' ?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but the issue is that there are many variables like this, used in various ways.</p>
  
  <p>Something to note is that these variable are in loops which I guess is why the original developer used them as they get reset and re-populated.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a  more correct way to populate the variables?</p>