"use strict" or similar in PHP?

Hello, I am beginner with PHP and prior to PHP I have worked with java for some time and with perl for very short period. I can't help to notice some things that are little annoyance for me with PHP, but I am sure someone more experienced can help me :-) Is there in PHP something like "use strict" from perl? I find it pretty annoying to need to run script over and over again just to find out that I made typo in variable name. Is there some way for PHP to cache some data on the page? I like very much PHP's speed but it would be even better to be able to cache some frequently used data from database? Also regarding databases, I liked a lot java's way of sending data to database using parameters ("select * from user where username = ?" and then passing parameter separately with database doing necessary escaping and everything). Is there something like PHPDBC similar to JDBC? TIA, Hans -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/