Johannes Schluter has posted about another update to be included in PHP 5.3 - an improved getopt function:

So PHP 5.3 has lots of new stuff offer, so let's take a look at one change: Added long-option feature to getopt() and made getopt() available also on win32 systems by adding a common getopt implementation into core. (David Soria Parra, Jani)

This gives Windows users a function they haven't had before in both web-based applications and on the command line. You can get more information about the use of the function from its page in the manual.