× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.



On 12/13/2010 8:22 AM, Mike Pavlak wrote:
I am not familiar with the "battle" either. Joe, can you site some references from which you are referring?

You should be familiar with this stuff, Mike, since you're selling it, but evidently not so I'll update you.

PHP4 and PHP5 are "compatible" except where they aren't. In fact, a couple of significant underlying pieces got completely changed. Two big ones are objects, which in PHP4 were passed by value but in PHP5 are passed by reference. Another problem which is minor but just painful as hell is the fact that the classnames in PHP5 are now case sensitive, whereas in PHP4 everything was always converted to lowercase.

There are other similar issues, enough so that lots of PHP4 code didn't run under PHP5. Enough problems existed that for years after the release, people were still recommending PHP4 over PHP5, and a majority of hosting sites were still on PHP4. Years, you say? Well, yeah. PHP5 is now nearly 7 years old. And out there on the Intertubes, lots of the example code for PHP is still PHP4, even though PHP4 was officially discontinued as of the end of 2007.

What's up with PHP6? Well, the move to Unicode didn't go too swimmingly. In fact, it gummed up the works enough that the PHP6 trunk was abandoned. So PHP6 is on indefinite hold while PHP5 continues and the PHP folks decide to come up with a new Unicode strategy. The point is that I'll be interested to see given the slow uptake of PHP5 how many years it takes PHP5 sites to get up to PHP6.

But really, don't take my word for it. Read up on the stuff. Read about PHP6.

My original comment was that if Oracle decides to force a fork on Java, they will turn it into PHP, in which backwards compatibility is not a given (take a look at magic quotes or register globals). The loss of stability may not be as important to a language you use primarily for scripting, but it's a crucial issue with a true enterprise language like Java.

Joe

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

This thread ...

Follow-Ups:
Replies:

Follow On AppleNews
Return to Archive home page | Return to MIDRANGE.COM home page

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.