-PHP 5.2 Update info or NEWS explained
+PHP 5.2 UPDATE INFO
-- Changed E_ALL error reporting mode to include E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR. (Marcus)
+===============================
+Changes in PHP datetime support
+===============================
- This change means that the value of the E_ALL constant has changed to 6143
- from its previous value of 2047. If you are setting your error reporting mode
- inside the Apache config file or the .htaccess files you will need to adjust
- the value of the error_reporting INI setting accordingly.
+Since PHP 5.1, there has been an extension named 'date' in the PHP core. This
+is the new implementation of PHP's datetime support. Although it will attempt
+to guess your system's timezone setting, you should set the timezone manually.
+You can do this in any of three ways:
+
+1) in your php.ini using the date.timezone INI directive
+2) on your system using the TZ environmental variable
+3) from your script using the convenience function date_default_timezone_set()
+
+All supported timezones are listed in the PHP Manual at
+http://www.php.net/manual/timezones.php.
+
+With the advent of PHP 5.2, there are object representations of the date and
+timezone, named DateTime and DateTimeZone respectively. You can see the methods
+and constants available to the new classes by running
+
+php --rc DateTime
+php --rc DateTimeZone
+
+under PHP CLI. All methods map to existing procedural date functions.
+
+==================================
+Items from the NEWS file explained
+==================================
- Added new error mode E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR. (Derick, Marcus, Tony)
- This changes a few E_ERROR conditions to something that you can now catch
- using a user error handler. If the user error handler does not grab these
- kind of errors they behave as fatal errors just like in any PHP version prior
- to 5.2. Errors of this type are logged as 'Catchable fatal error'.
+ Some of the existing E_ERROR conditions have been converted to something that
+ you can catch with a user-defined error handler. If an E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR is
+ not handled, it will behave in the same way as E_ERROR behaves in all versions
+ of PHP. Errors of this type are logged as 'Catchable fatal error'.
+
+
+- Changed E_ALL error reporting mode to includes E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR. (Marcus)
+
+ This change means that the value of the E_ALL error_reporting constant is now
+ 6143, where its previous value was 2047. If you are setting the error_reporting
+ mode from either the Apache config file or the .htaccess files, you will need
+ to adjust the value accordingly. The same applies if you use the numeric value
+ rather than the constant in your PHP scripts.
+
- Added support for constructors in interfaces to force constructor signature
checks in implementations. (Marcus)
-
- Starting with PHP 5.2 interfaces can have constructors. If you use this
- feature then all implementing classes must implement constructors with a
- matching signature, while normally constructors do not need to follow any
- base class or interface constructor signature. (Signature is the name for
- the parameter and return type definition which captures count, reference or
- not and any type hints).
+
+ Starting with PHP 5.2, interfaces can have constructors. However, if you choose
+ to declare a constructor in an interface, each class implementing that interface
+ MUST include a constructor with a signature matching that of the base interface
+ constructor. By 'signature' we mean the parameter and return type definitions,
+ including any type hints and including whether the data is passed by reference
+ or by value.
+
- Changed __toString to be called wherever applicable. (Marcus)
- The magic object method __toString() is now called whenever an object is used
- as a string. The function must not throw an exception or the script will be
- terminated with a catchable see above) fatal error. The PHP 5.0/5.1 fallback
- to return a string containing the object identifier has been dropped. People
- were assuming that this object identifier was unique when in fact it wasn't.
-
- Even with __toString objects cannot be used as keys to arrays. We might add
- built-in hash support for this. But for 5.2 you would need to either provide
- your own hashing and use an explicit string cast or use new function
- spl_object_hash()
+ The magic method __toString() will now be called in a string context, that
+ is, anywhere an object is used as a string. When implementing your __toString()
+ method in a class, you should be aware that the script will terminate if
+ your function throws an exception.
+
+ The PHP 5.0/5.1 fallback - returning a string that contains the object
+ identifier - has been dropped in PHP 5.2. It became problematic because
+ an object identifier cannot be considered unique. This change will mean
+ that your application is flawed if you have relied on the object identifier
+ as a return value. An attempt to use that value as a string will now result
+ in a catchable fatal error (see above).
+
+ Even with __toString(), objects cannot be used as array indices or keys. We
+ may add built-in hash support for this at a later date, but for PHP 5.2 you
+ will need to either provide your own hashing or use the new SPL function
+ spl_object_hash().
+
- Added RFC2397 (data: stream) support. (Marcus)
- Under windows this can mean a very rare change of behavior. If you are using
- NTFS filesystem and making use of meta streams in your application this no
- longer works for a file with the name 'data:' accessed without any path. If
- you need to do so you have to prefix the filename with the "file:" protocol.
- For the functionality itself look here http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2397.html.
+ The introduction of the 'data' URL scheme has the potential to lead to a
+ change of behaviour under Windows. If you are working with an NTFS
+ filesystem and making use of meta streams in your application, and if you
+ just happen to be using a file with the name 'data:' that is accessed without
+ any path information - it won't work any more. The fix is to use the 'file:'
+ protocol when accessing it.
+
+ There is information about the RFC at http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2397.html.
+
- Added allow_url_include ini directive to complement allow_url_fopen. (Rasmus)
- With this option one can now distinguish between standard file operations on
- remote files and inclusion of remote files. While the former is usually
- desired, the latter implies security risks if used naively. Starting with
- PHP-5.2 it is now possible to allow standard file operations while
- disallowing inclusion of remote files, which is also the default
- configuration now.
+ This useful option makes it possible to differentiate between standard
+ file operations on remote files, and the inclusion of remote files. While the
+ former is usually desirable, the latter can be a security risk if used naively.
+ Starting with PHP 5.2, you can allow remote file operations while
+ disallowing the inclusion of remote files in local scripts. In fact, this
+ is the default configuration.
+
- Dropped abstract static class functions. (Marcus)
- Due to an oversight PHP 5.0, 5.1 allowed abstract static functions. In PHP
- 5.2 only interfaces can have abstract static functions.
+ Due to an oversight, PHP 5.0 and 5.1 allowed abstract static functions in
+ classes. In PHP 5.2, only interfaces can have them.
+
+
+- Removed extensions (Derick, Tony)
+
+ The filepro and hwapi extensions have been moved to PECL and are no longer
+ part of the PHP distribution. The PECL package version of these extensions
+ will be created on the basis of user demand.
+
+
+- Added extensions (Rasmus, Derick, Pierre)
+
+ The JSON extension implements the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
+ data interchange format. This extension is enabled by default.
+
+ The Filter extension validates and filters data, and is designed for
+ use with insecure data such as user input. This extension is enabled
+ by default; the default mode RAW does not impact input data in any way.
+
+ The Zip extension enables you to transparently read or write ZIP
+ compressed archives and the files inside them.
+
+ Please refer to the PHP Manual for details.
+
+
+- Improved memory manager and increased default memory limit (Dmitry)
+
+ The new memory manager allocates less memory and works faster than the
+ previous incarnation. It allocates memory from the system in large blocks,
+ and then manages the heap by itself. The memory_limit value in php.ini is
+ checked, not for each emalloc() call (as before), but for actual blocks
+ requested from the system. This means that memory_limit is far more
+ accurate than it used to be, since the old memory manager didn't calculate
+ all the memory overhead used by the malloc library.
+
+ Thanks to this new-found accuracy memory usage may appear to have increased,
+ although actually it has not. To accommodate this apparent increase, the
+ default memory_limit setting was also increased - from 8 to 16 megabytes.
+
+
+- Changed priority of PHPRC environment variable on win32 (Dmitry)
+
+ The PHPRC environment variable now takes priority over the path stored
+ in the Windows registry.
+
+
+- Added notice when accessing return value from __get() in write mode (Marcus)
+
+ The reason for this is that __get() only returns variables in read mode, and
+ it is therefore not possible to write to the returned variable. In previous
+ releases there was no effective way to detect incorrect usage. Starting from
+ PHP 5.2, an E_NOTICE will be emitted in this situation.
+
+ WARNING: foreach() and functions that modify the internal array pointer will
+ now also trigger the same E_NOTICE, since modification requires that the
+ variable be accessed in write mode. To work around this, you should either
+ cast the returned value from __get() to an array, or use SPL's ArrayObject
+ instead of an array.
projects / php / commitdiff