fundamental PHP foreach question!

Weird!  Hopefully this is an easy 1000 points for someone.

This is taken straight from the manual, and I get an error - anyone see it?  I'm using CodeIgniter if that's relevant at all.

syntax error, unexpected '$v' (T_VARIABLE) in C:\xampp\htdocs1\fobg\application\controllers\week_fixtures.php on line 31

public function date_chosen()
      {            
            $a = array(1, 2, 3, 17);

            foreach ($a as $v) {
                echo "Current value of \$a: $v.\n";
            }
      }

also flagged up in Dreamweaver: