Most hosts still PHP 4

pohopo

With most hosts still using PHP 4 it kinda sucks as I feel 5 has a lot of great improvements (especially in the OOP department). With 6 in the works is PHP going to do something so it is 100% backwards compatible with PHP 4 sites?

Also, Hi! I left because my company blocked this site, but I am back now!

MarkR

pohopo wrote:
With 6 in the works is PHP going to do something so it is 100% backwards compatible with PHP 4 sites?

Absolutely not. Several features which exist in PHP4 (and earlier) will be permanently unconditionally removed in PHP6.

PHP6 will also disable some things which were on by default in PHP5 (magic quotes) and commonly used (register globals).

Essentially, there is a lot of old, bad code out there and the PHP developers want people to upgrade it.

Additionally the PHP4-compatible OO hack in PHP5 is going to be removed (as it was of limited use anyway)

Mark

pohopo

If it is not compatible then they should change the extension and make it so PHP4 and PHP6 can run side by side on a server. This way hosting companies with 20,000 clients can just add PHP6 and keep PHP4 for those clients that are using old PHP4 scripts and have no desire (or need) to upgrade.

This will be similar to what MS did with .asp and .aspx

dream_scape

MarkR wrote:
PHP6 will also disable some things which were on by default in PHP5 (magic quotes) and commonly used (register globals).

Not just disabled, but completely removed.

dalecosp

pohopo wrote:
If it is not compatible then they should change the extension and make it so PHP4 and PHP6 can run side by side on a server. This way hosting companies with 20,000 clients can just add PHP6 and keep PHP4 for those clients that are using old PHP4 scripts and have no desire (or need) to upgrade.

This will be similar to what MS did with .asp and .aspx

But hold on a minute. To be similar to MSFT, they should make it not backward compatible in any way.

And, that'll be good ... I'll advertise as a "professional PHP4 > PHP6 upgrade consultant". 😃

Elizabeth

You can run PHP4 and PHP5 at the same time, although I've never personally tried 🙂

bubblenut

I heard that the powers that be are no longer adding features to PHP4, just bug fixes. If this is the case I think it's great and hopefully a sign that support will end completely with the introduction of PHP6. You can't expect all previous versions to be supported and for as long as PHP4 is being supported you're going to get people thinking "Ah, PHP4 must be most stable version as it has the lowest version number" which is just not the case.

MarkR

To quote brad's host servage.net or whatever:

To use PHP4 you simply use the file extension .php to use PHP5 please use .php5 as file extension. We very much recommend using PHP4 as it is currently the best version imo anyway )

This is clearly nonsense. PHP5 is much better than PHP4 in every respect. There are loads more helpful functions and things work more consistently (OO). The fopen wrappers etc are much more powerful, and the new features added are generally very helpful.

I don't know when the wrote that - maybe when PHP5 was in Beta or something?

Brad - get a better host 🙂

Mark

vaaaska

I wonder what the percentages are on hosts who use CPanel or whatever the other blah, blah (just woke up - can't think yet) packages are out there. I'm pretty sure that CPanel does deall with PHP5 pretty well...and so when the time is right these packages could play a very large role in getting the average hoster up to speed.

Personally, it drives me crazy that I have to consider PHP4 anymore...but if a host simply doens't have it...you know the math...

Jason_Batten

MarkR wrote:
To quote brad's host servage.net or whatever:

This is clearly nonsense. PHP5 is much better than PHP4 in every respect. There are loads more helpful functions and things work more consistently (OO). The fopen wrappers etc are much more powerful, and the new features added are generally very helpful.

I don't know when the wrote that - maybe when PHP5 was in Beta or something?

Brad - get a better host 🙂

Mark

Um... PHP5 runs as CGI on servage.net

pohopo

Though it is nice that servage created a .php5 extension I still think it would be nice if Zend just made a unique extension for PHP 6 instead of trying to make it somewhat backwards compatible. As some have mentioned I am forced to develop in PHP 4 because mosts hosts refuse to upgrade. If PHP 6 defaulted to a unique extension, and was free, every host would jump at this as it is no cost to them and requires no special modifications (like what Servage had to do). I could then code someones site in PHP 6 as the client really doesn't care what language it is in.

Weedpacket

Oh sheez; it was bad enough changing all those script filenames from .php3 to .php....

Besides, who cares what the file extension is? It's not something that has any business being in a URL anyway.

vaaaska

Weedpacket wrote:
Oh sheez; it was bad enough changing all those script filenames from .php3 to .php....

Yeah, but you can use the .php3 to .php conversion utility to do all the hard work for you. 😉