Exec-php WordPress Plugin and PHP 7 Fix

I recently upgraded the version of PHP used on our hosting service to 7.1, as the Elementor plugin requires at least version 7 to run now. This had the side effect of breaking the Exec-php plugin (version 4.9) I use to allow PHP code to run in posts and pages. It manifested itself with the following error message:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘new’ (T_NEW) in

It appears you can no longer assign a class in PHP version 7 using the ‘&’ symbol and Exec-php makes extensive use of this. Here’s an example:

$GLOBALS['g_execphp_manager'] =& new ExecPhp_Manager();

I went through all of the instances and removed the & symbol using BBEdit and it now runs correctly.

Thanks to the CodeCave blog for this insight!