PHP compiler?

Hi, Just an idea and a question. Will there be a PHP compiler available sometime in the future? I'm talking about a compiler, which could be used to make plain text script source into a binary format, and which php interpreter could interpret. The script parsing phase would be thus left out in the execution time. I think that software like Zend encoder and Ioncube encoder do this already. Actually as I think of it, it's a bit surprising that there is not a such compiler already in PHP distribution? How about PHP5, is it going to have this? When will it be out? Ilkka -- Ilkka Huotari http://www.visiomode.com/