Re: RIP PHP 4?

chris# wrote:

On Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:30:26 -0500, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote: ...

The claim that is still repeated that one "has to" rewrite everything to be OO in order to port to PHP 5 is, quite simply, FUD.

True. But then again, what's the point of using 5 if you're not inclined, or have the need to write OO apps? It is simply alot of wasted language/ space and resources, as a whole. Hey! I don't need OO and I've already got PHP4 installed. Why bother with 5 at all?

There are a number of nice features in PHP5 that have nothing to do with actually creating your own classes or extending built-ins, such as (off the top of my head): - file_get_contents() - simplexml / DOM parsing / libxml2 - json_encode|decode - stable APC - SPL - PDO ( although you can get it for 4.4, you can't depend on it being there ) - backwards compatibility with lots of procedural PHP4 code =) If you're writing an app that does a lot of json or xml parsing or output, *even if you don't use the class keyword anywhere in your own code* PHP5 is a better language than PHP4. Drupal is a great example of this because even though Drupal doesn't use classes, many Drupal devs want to use PHP5 features in Drupal core. Right Larry? JeffG