PHP 5.x MySQL 4.1

OK so I develop in an Apache/PHP/MySQL/WinXP environment but production is on a Unix box. We recently switched production to MySQL 4.1. So I upgraded my development copy. According to you current documentation I need to be running mysqli to realize the full functionality of 4.1. Ok fine I switched my module to mysqli. Fortunately I'm using PEAR:DB for my db communication and have one central connection file so changing that from mysql to mysqli was relatively painless, but the thousands of lines of code with mysql_escape_string are not working, and a simple find and replace function will not work because mysqli_escape_string requires different parameters (yes I can and will replace it with addslashes, but I've always felt mysql_escape_string was more robust for MySQL). So first this is a bit of a cathartic rant after 1+ weeks of on and off attempting to get my development environment to function with my production environment (I can't be the only one out there whose sandbox runs on their local windows box, but runs production on a Unix server). Second could you please elaborate on the following (perhaps with a few examples that are more detailed than those in the mysqli comments:) If you would like to install the mysql extension along with the mysqli extension you have to use the same client library to avoid any conflicts. I can't believe it never occurred to you that backwards compatibility would be useful thanks, Norm Fox DBA, ZymoGenetics, Inc.