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:
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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]
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