Posted by Matthew Weier O'Phinney on 08/14/05 20:41

* Sebastian <sebastian@broadbandgaming.net> :
> Matthew Weier O'Phinney wrote:
> > * Sebastian <sebastian@broadbandgaming.net> :
> > > why php6 and not php5? look how long it took to get to php4 (with php5
> > > just starting to rolling out) and people are already talking about php6?
> >
> > My observation was that more people jumped to PHP4 from PHP3 than have
> > so far from PHP4 to PHP5. And PHP5 has hardly just started to roll out;
> > the official 5.0.0 release was over a year ago.
> >
> > > sure it is just a 'versioning' thing, but right now huge numbers of php
> > > users aren't using php5 (including me) on production environments, let
> > > alone start talking about php 6.
> >
> > And why aren't you using PHP5? Is there any specific reason? Is it
> > because your service provider doesn't offer it? If so, ask them why --
> > and report it here. As soon as PHP5 hit stable, I started using it, and
> > I've never looked back. Performance is better, and there are many
> > features -- exceptions, the new OOP model, autoload, iterators, etc. --
> > that simply have no analogs in PHP4.
> >
> > > anyway, i think i will be with php4 for a long time to come.
> >
> > Please tell the list why -- what does PHP4 offer over PHP5 for you? I
> > honestly want to know, and I'm sure there are others who would be
> > interested to see why people are not making the switch
> >
> i spent hundreds of hours building my site on php4,
> im not about to rewrite any of it to make it 'compatible' with php5.

Don't rewrite it to make it compatible with PHP5 -- rewrite it to take
advantage of PHP5's better performance and new features. Besides, you
probably will not need to rewrite any code -- probably just do some
cleanup and a few changes. More below.

> maybe my impressions of php5 are wrong, but last i heard apps built on
> php4 may or may not work right under php5
> - meaning you would have to rewrite code. am i wrong?

I've converted quite a bit of "PHP4" code to PHP5, and I've had very few
problems. Typically, I find that I get a few notices about deprecated
functions or some warnings -- and the warnings are usually about things
that should have generated warnings in PHP4, didn't, but now do in PHP5
(things like declaring a class property twice, for instance).

The fixes for these are typically not rewrites, but, as I said, fixes --
if anything, they make the code better.

Additionally, it's fairly easy to make such code backwards compatible
with PHP4, if you feel the need to do so.

> so i am 'afraid' of going with php5 in fear it will break my website.

The only way to find out if it will break is to try it. I'm willing to
wager that your code, if written well, will not only *not* break, but
likely perform better.

--
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
Zend Certified Engineer
http://weierophinney.net/matthew/

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