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PHP 5.3 Released
Sudheer writes "The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.3.0. This release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features and bug fixes. Some of the key new features include: namespaces, late static binding, closures, optional garbage collection for cyclic references, new extensions (like ext/phar, ext/intl and ext/fileinfo), over 140 bug fixes and much more."
PHP now comes with more GOTO!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Say what you will about PHP, but it puts food on my table and a good roof over my head. I have been clamoring for the new features in PHP 5.3.0 (closures, namespaces, they finally killed register_globals) and can't wait for the improvements coming in 6.
I truly appreciate the hard work of the PHP development team and the free language they have given us, congratulations on the new release.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
So does this mean I should upgrade from PHP 3.2? Are there any incompatibilities with my existing code?
//$login_check = mysql_num_rows($result_login);
Maybe someone can look over my login script and tell me if this will work in PHP5?
$query_login="select * FROM user";
$result_login = mysql_query($query_login) or die("Your passwrod is might be bad I think");
while($row=mysql_fetch_array($result_login))
{
$username=$row["username"];
if ($username==$username1)
{
echo "";
echo "window.location.href='login_error.php?rec=qq';";
echo "";
exit;
}
}
MABASPLOOM!
...is the ability to employ goto, though it is not allowed to jump into a loop or switch statement. A fatal error is issued in such cases.
I don't think that's quite fair. I think if the functions, calling conventions and naming were regularized, it would be a reasonably decent scripting language. But it's because it suffers multiple personality disorder that it's a horrendous pain.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh wait, almost any PHP project eventually gets reduced to a song and dance of ugly hacks.
*sigh* Yes, yes, we know, and Python or insert-your-pet-language-here is a gloriously clean and not-at-all counterintuitive* wonderland of fantasy and enchantment where fairies and elves smile upon you and give you their blessings and unicorns piss rainbows and shit candy.
At least until the next hip, trendy language comes out. How's your Ruby on Rails coding coming along?
*: Obviously, because if anyone finds it counterintuitive and an ugly hack, they are wrong and ugly and stupid and smell funny so there.
see whats new in PHP 5.3. Namespaces, phar, Closures & Lambdas, Functors, Traits,Magic functions. See link above for examples.
Uh, no.
Assuming that people running and maintaining the code are paying any attention, when 6.0 rolls out, those installations that have working code relying on features long-announced for deprecation that are removed in 6.0 will not upgrade to 6.0.
Major new interpreter versions enable new projects, and old projects can be migrated to them if there is a reason. But they aren't intended to be minor, backward compatible, performance improvement and bug fix releases -- that's why they are called major versions.
I think if the functions, calling conventions and naming were regularized
...and they removed the sigils, and removed the silent type coercion, and eliminated the "@" function prefix, and removed the "global" keyword, and removed the weird "list" lvalue function that looks-like-functional-pattern-matching-but-really-just-cosmetically, and fixed the pass-by-reference semantic...
But if you did all of these things, it really wouldn't be PHP anymore.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
__construct() is a magic method, just like __get(), __set(), __destruct(), __isset(), __toString(), so on and so forth. Magic methods are called without the programmer having to call them, under specific circumstances. In the case of __construct(), it's called when an object is instantiated. '__' defines a magic method and was chosen back in the day because PHP didn't have protected/private members and so the common practice was to prefix private/protected members with one underscore.
PHP was a solution to Perl, so -> is what Perl uses so that's what PHP uses.
The function naming is not so much an issue either. But what is frustrating is argument order. That's something that really needs to be revamped, backwards compatibility be damned.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
In seriousness, I'm with the OP. I wish the ridiculous language evangelism would stop. In the end, people are just being short sighted and limiting the tools at their disposal.
Similes are like metaphors
There's a huge codebase out there that's using PHP against MySQL, and using PHP's original ereg regex syntax instead of the Perl-wannabe stuff. What are they thinking, when they set out to break this?
Nothing is broken. Ereg is moved to the 'official' extension pack called PECL, which you can use for full backwards compatibility. At the same time the community has been warning not to use the ereg functions for the past at least 3-4 years, if not more, citing worse performance, worse featureset, and the possibility of PCRE replacing it at some point in the future.
What am I, as a Schemer? A minimalist? A chess player? But seriously, I always saw PHP as one of the prime examples of cargo cult language design. "Perl has strings in front of variables, let's copy them, gods will be pleased." Obviously no one cared that in Perl, the sigil has some actual meaning, like in shell, unlike in PHP, where the single type of variables could be handled the same way it is handled in Python, Ruby, stc. And then the adoption of that strange Java-like OOP system, quite weird for a dynamically typed language. Another cargo cult thinking? "Let's make a cargo plane out of wood and straw, soon the big birds will drop us more crates."
Ezekiel 23:20
Thank you, you got the gist of my post.
Every language has its strengths, weaknesses, glaringly awful bits, shiningly wonderful bits, and all of the subculture that go with those things. No language is perfect or even acceptable for every job.
PHP is an extremely organic language. It is the result of hundreds of developers' efforts and the inclusion of many modules that were once addons.
I've been using it since very early version 3.0, so I know why things are named the way they are. That doesn't make them any more consistent and it certainly doesn't make old code that grew up with the language any less correspondingly organic (read ugly and hackish).
Also, you forgot:
C++ - The emo kids
C# - The wannabes
BASIC - Special Education
Brainfuck - The kid who bit someone in third grade and now eats at his own table because he growls slightly too often
etc etc.
I'm hoping I can get a few more Underrated mods, I'd LOVE to have my first +5 Flamebait.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Assuming your argument-order frustration lies with the classic needle/haystack inconsistency throughout the string and array functions, the whole issue goes away if the PHP guys would simply evolve the string and array natives to be treated like objects:
in_array($needle, $haystack) -> $array->contains($needle)
strpos($haystack, $needle) -> $string->pos($needle)
etc.
Do that, and people will naturally migrate from the old inconsistent methods and move towards the more natural and consistent new methods without breaking anything.
If you really think it's worth breaking backwards compatibility, you could implement a friends suggestion - adding the PHP version number to the <?php wrapper: i.e. change to <?php6 ... ?>. Job done.
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Your comparison is off. Working at a company that has over 1000 java applications, I can tell you right now that you're so off. Simple fact, on a slower machine php will outshine java in terms of performance. On a enterprise powerhouse, the performance is about the same give or take based on how both are written. Its also not a fair comparison to compare java servlets to php. PHP to JSP is a fair comparison and your comparison would still be off base especially with the execution model. You cant compare PHP to Java on the same playing field as they are just that different.