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First up: the fatal error. $_REQUEST in PHP is an automatically-populated super-global that PHP fills with HTTP request data. As such, it can be regarded as a reserved word (more specifically, a predefined variable). Specifying $_REQUEST as a parameter to the getApplications() function tells PHP to reference the first argument as $_REQUEST, but super-globals cannot be locally scoped in PHP5 which means that PHP interprets the code as attempting to re-assign the super-global, thus the error (not sure of the specific version in which this changed, but it was possible to use super-globals as parameters in PHP4).

First up: the fatal error. $_REQUEST in PHP is an automatically-populated super-global that PHP fills with HTTP request data. As such, it can be regarded as a reserved word (more specifically, a predefined variable). Specifying $_REQUEST as a parameter to the getApplications() function tells PHP to reference the first argument as $_REQUEST, but super-globals cannot be locally scoped in PHP5 which means that PHP interprets the code as attempting to re-assign the super-global, thus the error (not sure of the specific version in which this changed, but it was possible to use super-globals as parameters in PHP4).

First up: the fatal error. $_REQUEST in PHP is an automatically-populated super-global that PHP fills with HTTP request data. As such, it can be regarded as a reserved word (more specifically, a Predefined Variable). Specifying $_REQUEST as a parameter to the getApplications() function tells PHP to reference the first argument as $_REQUEST (i.e. reassign the variable $_REQUEST to the argument) - this cannot be done in PHP5 (Not sure of the specific version in which this changed, but it was possible in PHP4).

First up: the fatal error. $_REQUEST in PHP is an automatically-populated super-global that PHP fills with HTTP request data. As such, it can be regarded as a reserved word (more specifically, a predefined variable). Specifying $_REQUEST as a parameter to the getApplications() function tells PHP to reference the first argument as $_REQUEST, but super-globals cannot be locally scoped in PHP5 which means that PHP interprets the code as attempting to re-assign the super-global, thus the error (not sure of the specific version in which this changed, but it was possible to use super-globals as parameters in PHP4).

If WP_DEBUG is false (as is default),

If WP_DEBUG is false (as is default), WordPress suppresses the vast majority of warnings and errors.