title: Request.getParameter with JSP
body: <p>I'm trying to auto-populate a drop down list based on a request parameter. I'm fairly new to JSP so forgive me for the simple question.</p>
  
  <p>The following works fine and displays the alert correctly:</p>
  
  <pre><code> alert('&lt;%=request.getParameter("lang") %&gt;');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So I know what I am trying to do is easy enough. But when I add this same logic in with my select statement using:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;option &lt;c:if test="${request.getParameter(\"lang\")=='En'}"&gt; selected="selected" &lt;/c:if&gt;    value="&lt;c:out value="${english}"/&gt;"&gt;English&lt;/option&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get an exception saying "The function getParameter must be used with a prefix when a default namespace is not specified". </p>
  
  <p>I'm a little confused as to why this doesn't work here...</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance</p>