Back from the wilderness

...and things have changed in the PHP world

[rich_b]

Hi all, I haven't programmed in PHP for what seems like ages, maybe it's a whole year now, and I've been out of the loop. Anyway, then I was using v4.0.2 (my host was a little backward) and now it seems there's a v4.3.9 with a new secure way of referring to session values, and a v5.0.2! I need to get back into PHP as I promised to knock up a small MySQL/PHP app for a friend. So what's the story - is v5 the future? Is v4 dead? Should I be learning that and has it gained widespread acceptance amongt hosts yet? Thanks for any help.

[coopster]

Welcome back, rich_b.

I don't see a lot of hosts running PHP5 yet, but most are keeping up on th 4.3 updates. 4.3.9 [php.net] is the latest stable release in version 4, but 4.3.10RC1 was just released yesterday.

I've been running PHP5 without issue on some of my boxes. Seems very stable and no known security issues.

[jatar_k]

I am only in the php5 contemplation stage, as long as they keep moving 4 forward I will stick with that for now.

I must admit there is some very cool stuff in 5 and it works well, as coop mentioned, but I just can't justify switching yet.

[mincklerstraat]

I'd think the main thing to keep in mind with 4.3.x is the new names for superglobals (which will also get you ready for PHP5 - e.g., $_GET[] and $_SERVER[] instead of $HTTP_GET_VARS or $HTTP_SERVER_VARS) - also register globals being off (by default), so when you pass something via get or post, you reference it on the next page with $_GET['whatever'] or $_POST['whatever'] instead of just plain $whatever. Plus a whole lot of groovy functions which won't fundamentally modify your vision of PHP, but will make programming some things a lot easier.