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PHP 5 Beta 1

Sterling Hughes writes "The PHP development community is proud to announce the release of PHP 5 Beta 1. Downloads are available in both source and binary form (for Windows users). A full list of changes is available in the ChangeLog. Some of the new features include much improved OO support, completely revamped XML support, and the default inclusion of SQLite."

10 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. They pulled MySQL out! by baptiste · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Check this:
    Due to issues surrounding the MySQL 4.0 license, the MySQL are no longer bundled with PHP. For more information on these licensing changes, please refer to the MySQL Licensing Policy.
    Wow - that's not a smart move. I guess this is a GPL (MySQL) vs Apache (PHP) license issue? Anyone have more details?
    1. Re:They pulled MySQL out! by CausticWindow · · Score: 5, Informative

      Check this thread on Google groups.

      --
      How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
  2. Turning into Java? by alannon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Take a look at the OO changes page. The syntax seems to be converging with Java. I find this amusing in some ways.

  3. Re:mysql? by Triumph+The+Insult+C · · Score: 5, Informative

    --with-mysql=/path/to/mysql

    bundled being the key word

    --
    vodka, straight up, thank you!
  4. Re:Problems with newer versions by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Informative
    I agree. Even though there are huge differences between version 3 and version 4 (and now version 5), there are also lots of differences between minor versions -- stuff like new functions, changes to how functions work (beyond just bug fixes), etc. Nevermind that there are hundreds of optional libraries and setup parameters, making every installation unique.

    If you're doing a non-trivial php site, and trying to make it work with different versions of php (osCommerce, for example), you end up having to rewrite many functions yourself to make sure they work consistently.

    I like PHP, but it suffers from an "incrementalism" design approach. Some stuff really needs to be rethought, and I think PHP 5 is on the right track to doing that.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  5. The obligatory predictions... by UsonianAutomatic · · Score: 5, Funny
    1. PHP Sucks, Perl is a much better language.
    2. PERL sucks, PHP does most of the same stuff Perl does but you can still read your own code a week later
    3. PHP isn't a real language, it's just a bunch of wrappers thrown around stuff. PHP sucks.
    4. Who cares about MySQL support, MySQL's not a real database anyway. MySQL sucks. PostgreSQL rulez.
    5. WTF I upgraded to PHP 4.1.2 and all my form submit scripts stopped working. Whats this register_globals crap anyway what a pain.
    6. Continue with language specific criticisms; loose typing, OO not as strong as Java, et cetera.
  6. Requires Microsoft Visual C++ by yerricde · · Score: 5, Interesting

    MySQL isn't bundled with it, but you can easily add it yourself when compiling.

    Compiling?

    Compiling PHP for Windows requires the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler version 6.0 or later.

    The Microsoft Visual C++ optimizing compiler version 6.0 or later is available only from Microsoft as part of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which costs $1,079 for one non-academic seat. (Microsoft no longer sells a Visual C++ optimizing compiler separately.)

    Some people are bound to bring up the $109 Microsoft Visual C++ Learning Edition, but 1. the EULA attached to its library probably does not permit distribution of generated binaries nor public performance (i.e. use on a public web site) of generated binaries, and 2. because it does not have an optimizer, the speed of generated binaries is closer to that of an interpreted program than to that of a compiled program.

    If I had any spare time, I'd fix this by porting the build to MinGW.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  7. Re:Still re-coding for register_global_variables.. by FryGuy1013 · · Score: 5, Informative

    um..

    extract($_POST);
    extract($_GET);
    extract($_COO KIE);

    ?

    --
    bananas like monkeys.
  8. Re:Kiss and say goodbye to Java language!! by alannon · · Score: 5, Insightful
    PHP is a very lightening fast object oriented scripting language. PHP is 100% written in "C" and there is no virtual machine as in Java. Nothing can beat "C" language ("C" is a language which never dies!!)
    How did this barely-literate rant get modded up to +2? What difference does it make that PHP is written in C? Java is written in C, and the JIT has some hand-coded assembler in it as well. So what? The HOWTO that is linked to hasn't been updated in 2 years and the benchmarks linked in the HOWTO are no longer even on the web.

    The raw speeds of execution between JSP and PHP may be similar (though I suspect that JSP ends up being much faster once the JIT has kicked in and optimized it, after a few executions). Additionally, there are many different JSP runners (Tomcat is only the reference implementation) and the performance between them can be very large (I recommend the JSP runner by Caucho for performance-critical systems. Besides this, PHP and JSP have a very, very large difference between them:

    PHP is usually run as a apache mod or sometimes, as a cgi. Because of this, it cannot store session state or cache inside of its process (since the process is either apache httpd, or the cgi, which terminates at the end of a page run). To get around this, any session variables get serialized and stored to disk at the end of each run, then un-serialized at the beginning of the request. This also means you can have no application-level caches of database information, since there is no place to put these. This is fine for small stateful sites or large stateless sites, but for any serious, large web application that has to maintain a lot of state, this ends up being a big performance disadvantage.

    JSP, on the other hand, is run from a servlet runner in a persistent process outside of the apache process. At the beginning of the request httpd makes a socket connection (usually a local unix socket, very fast) to the servlet runner and sends the request there. This is slightly more overhead than everything running in-process, but gives you the huge advantage of being able to cache whatever data you wish to inside the servlet runner's process. This means database lookups can be cached, sessions don't need to be stored in disk, timers for maintenance functions can be set, all within the servlet runner's process. This is great for large, complicated web applications but obviously not great for small, stateless systems, since it requires the overhead of a running JVM at all times you want the application to be available.

    Two different types of systems, two different purposes. I happen to use both in my professional web development, but use only java servlets and JSP for serious projects.
  9. FREE!! -- PHP Encoder and Cacheing -- FREE!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes yes.. To sooth all the scalp scratching surrounding PHP and FREE (quality) cacheing and encoding look no futher than

    MMcache - http://www.turcksoft.com/en/e_mmc.htm

    It's only a split second .001 slower than zend (faster than PHP Accelerator) and it FREE! Did I mention it works with Zend Optimizer , Zend Encoder and it can also Encode (protect) PHP files?

    I'm too damn good to you people! ; )


    PS: PHP makes programming fun again. Thats why people like to use it. Simple really.