Core PHP Programming, Third Edition

• Authors: Leon Atkinson;Zeev Suraski
• Venue: Core PHP Programming, Third Edition
• Year: 2003

From the Book:When I wrote the Foreword for Leon's second edition, PHP 4 had just started making it big, taking over the market share from PHP 3. The new version made great promises, and looking back it met all of its promises and more. We can see that at present PHP 4 has no doubt not only replaced almost all PHP 3 installations, but has conquered the Web application development market with its millions of installations and use in enterprise companies.Today, we are again facing exciting times. PHP 5 is about to be released, promising major improvements to the growing PHP community. As with previous versions, the major improvements are at the language level. Zeev and I redesigned the object model--at last dumping the problematic model, which originated from our work in PHP 3. Some of the other changes we made include:Treating objects as handles and not native types, allowing for other new features and fixing some odd behavior.Allowing for private, public, and protected access restrictions on members and methods.Introducing exception handling a la C++'s try/catch.Providing interfaces similar to the ones found in Java giving.And lots more...PHP 5 is also expected to feature improvements and additions in other areas, including better all-around XML support, improved streams support, and more.In the 3rd edition of Core PHP Programming, Leon has invited my partner Zeev Suraski to cover the PHP 5 language changes. No doubt that Leon's experience in writing PHP books and Zeev's superior knowledge of PHP 5 and its internals have led to a must-buy book for PHP developers.I hope you enjoy this book and that itaccompanies you during the adoption phase of PHP 5.Andi Gutmans Herzelyia, Israel