[pear] database abstraction / general questions

Hi, I have some questions regarding PEAR in general and its database abstraction in particular: 1.) Could anyone give me or point me to an example of the use of PEAR's database abstraction, for instance with MySQL, please? 2.) Why do the pear/db classes use call-time pass-by-reference? It's been deprecated as far as I know and one is encouraged to disable it in the php.ini. 3.) Where can I find information on the include_once() and use functions / statements? 4.) How does one install PEAR (on Win32)? I added the php/pear/ directory to my include_path for the time beeing. 5.) Is there a special PEAR-related mailinglist? -- <?php $a=explode(" " ,"119 130 128 129 45 110 123 124 129 117 114 127 45 ". "125 117 125 45 117 110 112 120 114 127");for($i=0;$i<sizeof($a);$i++)print chr($a[$i]-13);// http://gravedancer.rc5.de/ | sebastian.bergmann@web.de ?>