I just read this interesting article PHP6 -evolution or revolution where shows some new features of the next upcoming version of php, PHP 6. According with this article there will be some new features and some things will be deprecated like: Unicode support Var will be the same as Public Register globals will be deleted Magic Quotes will be deleted Safe mode will dissapear Return by reference will give an error The zend.ze1 compatibility mode and the freetype 1 and Gd 1 will be deleted Fastcgi will be activated always Register Long Arrays deleted too, only $_PUT, $_GET, etc. will be supported. I'm happy that at last the register globals, maquic quotes and the safe mode will be deleted as well that the long arrays will not be supported any more, this issues cause a lot of problems everytime, especially if someone can't access the php.ini file. Best regards,

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Is this all? Or just a list of major changes in comparison to previous ones?

I don't use $_PUT or $_GET... and i'd prefer not to, the global means I use now instead of having to use different ones for different situations that end up doing the same darn thing in the end is quite annoying.

The rest don't affect me all that much I guess.

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Well, personally I would call PHP6 not a major new release with a lot of new features, but mainly a very big and needed clean up for the stuff which were always bothering most of people and were causing problems, especially if you don't have access to php.ini or moreover to .htaccess features.. and of course a lot of existing stuff improved, but well, the thing that PHP6 is not released yet isn't anything as bad, because not a lot of web servers would switch to it.. A lot of servers still run PHP4 and MySQL4, but as I noticed for some time now Astahost is running on PHP5 with MySQL5, so this is cool, but this made me to continue my scripting without looking into that it would work on PHP4 or not!

For example, Unicode was for most people a very awaited thing in PHP, now (on PHP6) by default the unicode is on and you can turn it off as I know only in php.ini, it really sometimes made scripts to not run properly.. At last they removed register globals on/off but that means that php3 scripts won't run, who needs them anyway? and of course the magic_quotes and safe_mode functions, which was hell for most programmers, especially making new php applications, because when they are bigger/more advanced the problems are overcome, but still with extra unneeded code.. the only bad thing I see in PHP6 is that a lot of what will be needed to be rewritten, but thats good, we will have much better PHP applications and let the old code die and see its funeral

 

 

 

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For all I know, PHP4 and PHP5 ares still being developed as separate projects, and none has to do with the others. I suppose PHP6 comes as a new derivative and with the clean-up of what the managers of the project think as flaws in the other versions. It is true that still many servers(free or paid), if not most, still run on a stable PHP4 version, and this is quite annoying as usually my team codes in PHP5 and there aren't many sites to test scripts. PHP5 is only offered as a novelty. Now who will have PHP6 offered in their servers?

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I don't see anything revolutionary or evolutionary either in PHP 6. PHP5 still can be called evolutionary over php4.
I believe PHP needs makeover atleast in terms of the way the functions are organized. There should be some basic OOPs principals for the grouping of the functions.

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