PHP 4 or PHP5?

Originally Posted by seen.to PHP 4 for me since most servers haven't taken on PHP 5 yet. 5 is backwards compatible so stuff will work in both but make something for 5 and try and run it on a PHP 4 server and you're buggered.

Yeah I agree. Although when my old host switched to PHP5 suddenly a lot of my scripts crashed and stoppped working. Later on the developers released patches and eventually problems were fixed. I then decided to buy a dedicated server so I can handle things by myself and my partner.

I keep on my local dev whatever my host runs. Currently, thats 4.3.10. As it updates, I'll update.

Have you read much on PHP5 yet though? I suggest picking up a book or at least reading a few articles on PHP5 as your host might upgrade to PHP5 suddenly, Because my old host did it and it was no fun, a lot of apps crashed and I had to wait a while for some patches to be released.

Have you read much on PHP5 yet though?

Yes, I have indeed.

The biggest changes to PHP have been in the object oriented department, which I do not use exclusively.

I'm excited about the new functions it brings though, like str_ireplace().

Yeah that is its big update (the object oriented part) I am starting to get into OOP a lot more, and using it a lot more in my apps. I am actually in the process of creating a nice/powerful mySQL database class which I will release to some developers. Expect a post from me soon about this.

PHP4 - I prefer it. May be I am conservetive, but I think it's more stable... Anyway, my hostingcompany provides me with PHP4. And I have no choice. But I'd rather sticik to PHP4.

Originally Posted by mike.fro Yeah I agree. Although when my old host switched to PHP5 suddenly a lot of my scripts crashed and stoppped working. Later on the developers released patches and eventually problems were fixed. I then decided to buy a dedicated server so I can handle things by myself and my partner.

Personally, I think any host that switches to PHP5 is really very stupid.

Most scripts are not ready for PHP5... I've done a lot of reading on it and have been doing a lot of practice with it I love the new OOP features.

And seriously guys, how come you haven't mentioned the big XML update? In PHP4 XML was a pain in the ARSE! But in PHP5 we have 4 XML wrappers which are better than they've even been.

There's also all the new iterators which are pretty freakin' awesome

Regards,
Patrick

4.3.10 currently on my host and my own computer.

The best situation that I have come across so far is that some hosts are still using PHP4 as default for all of their servers, but also provide the ability to use PHP5 either sitewide or per file/directory (eg, using .htaccess). That's the best compromise until the developers provide updates to their applications.

If I'm not mistaken cPanel has problems with PHP5 (or does it just not work at all?) which is the reason why site5.com haven't moved over to PHP5 just yet.

I'm absolutely loving the biggest additions to PHP5, enhanced XML and OOP, both of which are essential components in my everyday coding. XML in PHP4 was indeed a pain in the butt and OOP... well... wasn't too pretty. But things are now much improved (though not quite perfect yet).

Cheers,
Salathe

I haven't read a single thing about the changes even though PHP 5 has been discussed for a while now. Better OOP sounds good, I will have to check it out.