Should I not consider books on PHP 6?

budbiss

I briefly dabbled in PHP years ago, but recently I decided that I'd like to get back into it and this time with the guidance of a good book on the topic. I understand that PHP 6 is available now, but PHP 5 is what everyone is using and most likely will be the version most people use for a long time to come. With that said, I noticed that there are alot of books just becoming available on PHP 6. I'm going to assume that it's perfectly fine to stick with books on PHP 5. What do you all think about this?

NogDog

PHP6 is still in development, and I have yet to see anything approaching an official announcement as to when it might be released.

PHP 5.2.6 is the latest stable release. The first alpha release of 5.3 has just been made, so it looks like there will be at least one major PHP5 version released before we can expect anything to come from PHP6. And even if 6 were released by the end of this year (which I have no reason to expect), it might well be another couple years before any mainstream hosting companies start supporting it at all. (Heck, many/most still support PHP4 along with PHP5, and there are still a few Luddite hosts out there that only support PHP4. :rolleyes: )

So, long story short, I'd stick with PHP5 for now.

Ashley_Sheridan

I would probably focus on PHP 5. You may need to rethink some code at some points when you do come across one of those poor hosting places which only offers PHP4 (which mine does, despite the fact they told me ages ago it was due for an upgrade!)

PHP6 is not going to be offered on any hosting just yet, so unless you host your own stuff, it's not going to be too obtainable.

nrg_alpha

PHP 6 is not production ready. As mentioned, I would stick to 5.2.6. Besides, webhosting providers would be foolish to use PHP 6 at this point.

Just be sure to steer clear of any code aspects that will not be supported in PHP 6 (magic quotes, POSIX regular expressions, etc..)