[RESOLVED] general newbie question on extensions !

[quecoder]

HI !😃
there are some extensions like mysqli that are not supported by many shared webhosting , Imagemagik , PDO or Gettext ...
Can not I by any means use them in those webhostings ?
as i am learning PHP now , and wondering if they are worth reading about while they are not always available ..
and what is the alternative (for the webhostings, not for the extensions 🙂 ) ,, hosting myself ? ?

Oh , and also , --with-mcrypt[=DIR] <<< these ugly looking things that I dream one day I can understand them .... what are they ?😉

[bradgrafelman]

If your webhost doesn't support MySQLi, then you should first ask your webhost why they don't support it, and if they're unwilling to change their position then you tell them not to expect your service or recommendation. Then you promptly cancel your service with them. There are too many competent hosts out there that offer the MySQLi/PDO/etc. libraries that have been introduced as the older libraries (e.g. mysql) are deprecated and eventually phased out; there's no reason you should feel stuck with one that doesn't and have to work around such limitations/hindrances.

As for "--with-mcrypt", that is a configuration switch used to compile PHP with support for the mcrypt library, with the DIR being an optionally specified path to libmcrypt dependency that must be previously installed on the server. Unless you own your own server and manually compile PHP from source, you'll probably never have to worry about such switches.

[quecoder]

Thanks bradgrafelman alot 🙂