Put something like this:

  function myErrorHandler ($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline) 
  {
    die("<p>$errstr in line $errline of $errfile. Dieing now.</p>");
  }
  error_reporting(E_ALL);
  set_error_handler(myErrorHandler);

in an include file, and perhaps use the auto_prepend_file php.ini setting
to automagically include it in all your scripts.

it not about error handling. The problem here is that there IS no error. OK in the case of an endless loop there is. But consider this case:

$nSumm = 1+2;
echo $nSum;

What? 1+2 equals "" ????

That doesn't raise an error, but it does raise an 
E_NOTICE. You should be setting your error reporting to 
E_ALL while you're debugging, and your examples will 
indeed raise E_NOTICEs telling you about undefined 
variables. 
 
This isn't really any different from Perl (without use 
strict; of course) and isn't likely to change any time 
soon. 
 
The moral of the story is to use E_ALL when you're writing 
code. 
 
J 
 

I didn't want to set up a religious debate! I don't care for how that is solved in Pearl! I know that I can "handle" runtime errors but this kind of errors could be coped with at "build-time". With a more complex script it becomes less likely that this very special condition takes place where the stupid variable name typo comes into play. Do us a favor and add that "VARIABLES MUST BE INSTANCIATED"-option into php. The absence of that option is the main central weakness of php and I don't think it's big time to remove that illness! Thanks!