PHP 5 RC 1 released

An anonymous reader writes "PHP just released the first release candidate of PHP 5 after 4 beta releases. It is considered stable and feature-complete -- so get testing!"

Comments

Re:Power Power Power

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, I remember when it was a main tenet of programming that data should be separate from presentation. However, PHP has shown just how powerful integrating data and presentation can be through inlining code directly into a webpage layout.

Try something complicated. You'll change your tune right quick.

Re:Power Power Power [where's my perl!?!]

[Telastyn]

Huh?

Having been a big PHP fan, let me assure you that PHP has a strong central theme like a kleptomaniac with ADD has a strong attention span.

Having been a big PHP fan, every story about PHP releases reminds me of the page long list of vulnerabilities and issues under it's entry in netbsd's package listing.

Having since moved to perl, I'm wondering if those death throes you're talking about are the same ones that haven't arrived on my BSD machine yet...

Re:significant changes

[Carl T]

the semantics regarding object assignment have changed from copy to reference

Sounds to me like the migration to PHP 5 will be a long and painful one. The project I've been working on in PHP for the last couple of years sure could use some of the new features, and if what another poster said about responsiveness translates to higher speed, that's another reason to switch. Then again, looking through megs of PHP code for things that are suddenly ever so slightly broken because of subtle language changes is not exactly fun.

For new projects, OTOH, I don't see much reason to stick with PHP 4, except the horrors of having to instruct users that they need to upgrade their PHP interpreter(s) again.