The PHP Group is happy to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.2.0, the latest version of the widely-used, general-purpose scripting language that is especially well-suited for Web development.
This latest release contains over one hundred changes, bug fixes and improvements over the previous release, PHP 4.1.2. Among the highlights are experimental support for Apache 2, cleanups in variable handling and overhauls of various PHP components, including the domxml, posix, sockets and iconv extensions. For more information, see below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- External variables The biggest change in PHP 4.2.0 concerns variable handling. External variables (from the environment, the HTTP request, cookies or the web server) are no longer registered in the global scope by default. The preferred method of accessing these external variables is by using the new Superglobal arrays, introduced in PHP 4.1.0. More information about this change: * PHP Manual: Predefined variables http://www.php.net/manual/en/html/language.variables.predefined.html * The PHP 4.1.0 release announcement http://www.php.net/release_4_1_0.php * Thomas Oertli's article on secure programming in PHP http://www.zend.com/zend/art/art-oertli.php Compatibility The Apache Software Foundation recently released their first General Availability version of Apache 2. PHP 4.2.0 will have EXPERIMENTAL support for this version. You can build a DSO module for Apache 2 with --with-apxs2. We do not recommend that you use this in a production environment. PHP 4.2.0 still lacks certain key features on Mac OS X and Darwin, and isn't officially supported by the PHP Group on these platforms. Specifically, building PHP as a dynamically loaded Apache module isn't supported at this time. PHP 4.3.0, due to be released in August, 2002, will be the first PHP release to officially support Mac OS X. It, along with future Mac OS X and Apache releases, will enable full feature parity with other PHP platforms. Improvements PHP 4.2.0 includes several improvements: * External variables (from the environment, the HTTP request, cookies or the web server) are no longer registered as global variables * Overhaul of the sockets extension * Highly improved performance with file uploads * The satellite and mailparse extensions were moved to PECL and are no longer bundled with the official PHP release * The posix extension has been cleaned up * iconv handling has been improved * Output buffering support, which was introduced in PHP 4.1.0 has been stabilized * Improved performance and stability of the domxml extension * New multibyte regular expression support * LOTS of fixes and new functions For a full list of changes in PHP 4.2.0, see the NEWS file (http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-4.php). regards, Derick Rethans [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php