If you have a missing close-bracket "}" somewhere in your code, the PHP parser tells you that the error is at the last line.  If you have a multi-hundred or thousand line file, this makes life a bitch.

Rasmus tells me that the reason for this behavior is because functions can be nested, which means that:

function a 
{
  function b
  {
  } 
}
is OK. This is a silly feature.  Why do you have it, for scoping reasons?  It means that you can't effectively tell where syntax errors occur.

Suggestion: Either make nested functions turned off by default but you can turn them on with a PHP global variable, like $PHP_BIZARRO_NESTED_FUNCTIONS = 1;

or

have the parser syntax set up so that it marks where a possible syntax error occurred (IOW it sees a possible nested function, but it could also be a syntax error), and if it reaches the end of the file with a missing "}" or two, that it displays the location where it parsed the nested function.