PHP 5 Release Candidate 2 Released

alexre1 writes "From the PHP website: 'The second Release Candidate of PHP 5 is now available! This mostly bug fix release improves PHP 5's stability and irons out some of the remaining issues before PHP 5 can be deemed release quality. Note that it is still not recommended for mission-critical use but people are encouraged to start playing with it and report any problems.' Cool! Hopefully we'll have a stable PHP 5.0 soon."

Comments

PHP5

[Leffe]

I run PHP5 on one of my developer boxes(I should install it on the other one too, but I'm lazy), and as far as I know it's completely back-compatible(except from some new reserved keywords, but that's easy to fix). All the new features are really nice, and I have to say that I noticed a tiny gain in speed too.

There's no reason not to switch to PHP5, everyone please do it now! Writing back-compatible code is no fun, I want to use all the new and exciting OOP features.

Here's a page describing all the new features in PHP5 and the ZEND engine version 2!

Re:PHP5

[eddy the lip]

...and as far as I know it's completely back-compatible(except from some new reserved keywords, but that's easy to fix)

If this is true, it takes away one of my major fears about PHP5. They haven't exactly been careful about this in the past, and there's been more than one occasion where I was franticaly updating mounds of code because they decided something should be spelled different.

I've been keeping half an eye on the changes, and the only thing that had twigged as a possible issue so far was in classes, especially changing the default contstructor. Changing the name of a constructor isn't a big deal in itself, but I'd be doing it in a lot of code, distributed across many, many sites. I'd be very happy to put this particular fear to rest.

That aside, I am looking forward to the new OOP features. 95% of what I write is OOP, and there are some things in there I've been wanting for a long time.

Re:PHP5

[Anthony Boyd]

as far as I know it's completely back-compatible

Except for the whole copy-by-reference thing. Of course the new way is better, but people who relied on the old way might be surprised by some unexpected values.

There's no reason not to switch to PHP5, everyone please do it now!

Except that "it is still not recommended for mission-critical use," right?

hello?!?

[Charles Dart]

Considering how much of the web runs on PHP, I am surprized at the lack of interest in this new release. PHP 5 when combined with MySQL 4 is going to do some amazing things.

Wake up you people!

Re:hello?!?

[mercuriser]

It's going to be even better then that!

PHP5 comes with its very own integrated 'lite' sql server that can handle simple queries very very quickly.

The decision to implement SQLite into PHP5 is "good for small and mid-sized applications, because the database lives on the same server as the application that is using it"

Re:hello?!?

[jasoncart]

What about MySQL 5? Stored procedures seems to be the biggest new feature...

Changes are bad?

[DamienMcKenna]

All of the changes made so far have been for good reasons, usually security. The $GLOBALS change was a major boon to security, and I'm personally glad that one of the 4.3.x releases broke the invalid $array[key] notation as it'll teach people to RTFM once in a while. If something breaks in your code 99% of the time it is your fault.

Damien
Web developer for four+ years

Re:Changes are bad?

[eddy the lip]

I'd ammend that to most changes have been for good reasons. In my post above, I was thinking specifically of the $HTTP_VARS_ change. Granted, typing $_POST is a heckuva lot nicer, but I really wish more thought had been put into how to handle that. There have also been a number of changes in how individual functions behave between point releases where the only rationale seemed to be that they thought it looked nicer the new way. (It usually did, but don't go doing things like that unless you give people an escape route, at least temporarily).

Perl is an excellent example of how to handle backwards compatibility the right way. 6 is almost a complete language rewrite, but it's still going to be able to run perl 5 scripts without change, unless you're doing something really funky. And I never had a perl 5 script break because of an upgrade during the entire 5.x series.

If something breaks in your code 99% of the time it is your fault.

I'd argue that lacking a formal specification, the language is the final arbiter of what's correct. If it compiles and runs, it's correct. It might be shite code, but if it breaks afterwards because of a change in the language, it's hardly the fault of the coder.

(Web developer for nearly twice as long, and extreme style nazi).

Re:Changes are bad?

[XO]

Er, yeah, how exactly else are you supposed to access a member of an array?

Re:Changes are bad?

[jpkunst]

Maybe he means that it should be $array['key'] (quoted key) instead of $array[key] (unquoted key)?

JP

release canidates not really news

[bangular]

RC1 was announced already, announcing RC2 on slashdot is just a bit superfulious. When 5.0 is released it will be news worthy, but rc2 isn't really news, espically since rc1 got it's own slashdot story.

Re:release canidates not really news

[z0ink]

It might not make it to the front page, but releases of PHP are generally big news. PHP drives a considerable portion of todays pages. Some developers get all their news from /., so the more exposure the better. ;)

Re:Incorrect Link

[mattwarden]

Score:0, Troll

So much for commentary on how similar PHP5 looks to Java.

PHP syntax rant

[StandardDeviant]

Eh, first they rip off perl (poorly)
and now they're goign to rip off Java
(probably poorly, given their track record).

Sorry to seem trollish, I've just written
enough in all three languages (been writing
web code for pay since '99) to notice that
three quarters of PHP is a stripped-down,
amateurishly implemented clone of features
from other languages (an example that springs
to mind is: copying visual signification of
variables like perl, but not disambiguting
singular and plural types (perl: $scalar and
@array vs. php: $scalar and $array)). And
whoever decided that it was ok for some
array functions to use foo($var,$array)
and others to use bar($array,$var) should
just be slapped repeatedly with a dead trout.
Also, anyone who has tried to use PHP's reference
mechanism, usually ends up shocked at the number
of bugs-by-design present in the language.
I hope the Zend team has picked shallow or deep
copy for PHP5 rather than just having the
interpreter do an indeterminate mix of both
like in PHP4...

I use PHP because the majority of the code at my
workplace was written in it (by people who,
imho, sucked) so the current devs have too much
legacy code to feasibly port to something
saner. Irritating sometimes, but it pays the bills.

*shrug* I guess PHP is what passes for
language design these days, just like MySQL
is what seems to pass for relational database
management these days.