thanks philip,
i could read the text in notepad but i forgot myself for a few minutes and was entering vd code instead of javascript which was causing the problems.
~M

>>hi all,
>>a customer has a piece of java script in a php file and i need to change it. can i just modify the script i notepad or do i need a compiler? i have made a few changes and uploaded them but they have not worked, the script now does nothing. I need to make sure that a field that has been filled in is a nunmber so i was going to say if ucase(field1) <> lcase(field1) then problem.
>>~M
>
>Hi Mark,
>
>Unless the site is using the Zend Optimizer, PHP files are generally not compiled. The Zend Optimizer compiles and encrypt PHP files, which improves performance, but also prevents them from being edited.
>
>If you can open the PHP files (say with Notepad) and see un-encrypted PHP code, then the Zend Optimizer is not being used, and you can use pretty much any editor to modify the code.
>
>If this is the case, sounds like a code problem in the update that is causing the page to no longer work.