Re: "PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites" Book

Angus Mann wrote:

Hi all. I monitor this list and occasionally contribute as an amateur so please forgive a question that might seem terribly obvious to those in the know. I'm confused about all this PHP 6 talk. Until now I thought I was right up there, because I worked with PHP 5.29 and was ready to upgrade to 5.3. How does it happen that PHP 5.3 has just been released, but books already exist about PHP 6 ? I searched google and so on, but still can't really work out how the PHP development cycle works. Given that PHP 6 exists, does that mean I'm "behind the times" working with 5.29 or 5.3? I only just figured out that I can get the internet on my *computer*. Up until now I'd just been accessing it with a pencil and paper but the computer version is so much better!

PHP is open source software. The development branch (what will be released as php 6) is thus open to the public. It will be quite some time before php 6 becomes common on production servers, even after it becomes the stable branch. php 5.3 is the current _stable_ release, but few if any production servers actually run it - you are much more likely to find php 5.2.x or php 5.1.x on current production servers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for example, ships with php 5.1.x branch - though the next version of RHEL will likely have php 5.2.x (but probably will NOT have php 5.3.x and certainly not php 6). Hope that helps. btw, what's this getting the internet on your computer bit. Are you telling me my IBM punch cards are outdated?