php 5 vs php 4

bongbong

hi,

a few days ago, someone told me that the reason he is not using php5 for his websites is because this version is till very unstable so he is still writing the scripts in php4.

is its true that php 5 is very unstable as he claimed?

thanks.

NogDog

In my experience, I have not seen any "stability" problems with the current releases of PHP 5. Note that we're already up to PHP 5.2.1 as the latest stable release now; it's not like you're dealing with a 5.0.0 version or such. The only reason I often work with PHP 4 at this point is if I'm either developing something for someone who is on a PHP 4 server, or if I want to create a general use script that is as portable as possible. Otherwise I prefer to use PHP 5 due to its new/improved functions and much more robust object-oriented capabilities.

bpat1434

That claim was true, oh, about 6 months ago or so. Not sure of the exact date. But as NogDog has said, PHP 5 is already at the second minor build.

Warning: Speculation to begin...
It quite possibly could be that many hosts fear upgrading from PHP 4.x to 5 because it will break some programs / scripts. Many people still use register_globals as on so anything in the $_POST array is already [man]extract[/man]ed into variables. This is a security issue, and has been fixed in subsequent versions of PHP.

Now PHP 5 is considered stable. Stable enough for some hosts to provide concurrent versions. If you can get your friend to cite specific examples of how PHP 5 is more unstable that PHP 4, I'd be interested. Both have their pluses, and each has their minuses. But there's no reason not to use PHP 5. If you don't use the OO stuff that PHP 5 has, or you don't deal with XML too much, it won't matter to you. If you want OO or an easier XML integration, PHP 5 does just that.

I'm working on getting both running at once.... that's a chore....

EPJS

One of the hosts I work on recently (about 2 weeks ago) added PHP5 to their servers (keeping 4 so it uses both PHP4 and PHP5 with different file extensions).

I like the new abilities in PHP5 (like scandir), but there are some things I wrote that broke in PHP5 (luckily for me the servers supports both versions) (I'm still trying to figure out how to make the script work with PHP5).

So one reason why someone might wish to stay with PHP4 on their server is that some scripts designed for PHP4 might not work on PHP5.

scrupul0us

they WILL work if u spend sometime to write them correctly

alot of open source ecommerce carts that hosts offer for free are register_globals dependent and that is a huge reason in my eyes they wont ditch php4... dreamhost supports both but not concurrently... they also dont let you turn register_globals on if u use php 5

i LOVE PHP5... its so choice and a step in the right direction

NogDog

Note that the register_globals problem first became an issue with PHP 4.2.0, when the default configuration switched to r_g being "off" instead of "on". Register_globals scripts can still work in any PHP 4 or PHP 5 installation, if you turn register_globals on, either via php.ini or .htaccess. (However, the current indications are that there will be no register_globals at all in PHP 6, so avoid using them in any scripts you want to be usable for the foreseeable future. 😉 )

scrupul0us

NogDog wrote:
(However, the current indications are that there will be no register_globals at all in PHP 6, so avoid using them in any scripts you want to be usable for the foreseeable future. 😉 )

what else are they doing away within the near future?

NogDog

Not sure how "near future" PHP 6 is. Anyway, I believe the plans include doing away with "safe mode".