John Lim looks at the release of PHP 5.1 with a bit more skeptical eye in his latest blog post today.

Well PHP 5.1.0 is out. This is a monumental piece of work, and congratulations to the PHP 5 internals team for all the hard work. However it feels rushed through the door. Apparently there are compatibility problems (with typecasting when parameter passing, the prototype date class, and possibly other stuff.) Wait for the patches.

He also mentions some of the turmoil that's been going on on the PHP internals mailing list lately, especially pre-5.1 release...

John Lim looks at the release of PHP 5.1 with a bit more skeptical eye in his latest blog post today.

Well PHP 5.1.0 is out. This is a monumental piece of work, and congratulations to the PHP 5 internals team for all the hard work. However it feels rushed through the door. Apparently there are compatibility problems (with typecasting when parameter passing, the prototype date class, and possibly other stuff.) Wait for the patches.

He also mentions some of the turmoil that's been going on on the PHP internals mailing list lately, especially pre-5.1 release...

According to Wez in this latest blog post today, the PDO libraries (with the release of PHP 5.1) have been released as stable.

With the release of PHP 5.1 stable, it's time to mark PDO as stable too. I've pushed the first batch of stable PDO extensions out to PECL.

Now that PDO 1.0 is out the door, we can start looking at new features. I've put together a preliminary list of things, which can be found on the tip of the 5.1 branch.

So, if you'd like to contact Wez about new features for consideration, you can find his email contact at the bottom of the blog post. I'm sure a comment posted on it would work as well...

According to Wez in this latest blog post today, the PDO libraries (with the release of PHP 5.1) have been released as stable.

With the release of PHP 5.1 stable, it's time to mark PDO as stable too. I've pushed the first batch of stable PDO extensions out to PECL.

Now that PDO 1.0 is out the door, we can start looking at new features. I've put together a preliminary list of things, which can be found on the tip of the 5.1 branch.

So, if you'd like to contact Wez about new features for consideration, you can find his email contact at the bottom of the blog post. I'm sure a comment posted on it would work as well...

On cyberlot's blog today, he mentions some additional backwards compatibility bugs that PHP 5.1 and 4.4.1 are adding into the mix.

As of PHP 5.1 and in seems 4.4.1 are adding another BC break one that could break anyone using a object based database library within there custom session handler, and also make any registered shutdown function useless if it relys on objects, although the bugs focus on the session aspect of things.

This isn't something you can just "Document" away like they are trying to do.

Basically they are saying any user made or PHP made object is useless during the shutdown phase of PHP.

I could definitely see this issue causing some headaches for a lot of people out there. For more information on this issue, check out the bug report he refers to...

On cyberlot's blog today, he mentions some additional backwards compatibility bugs that PHP 5.1 and 4.4.1 are adding into the mix.

As of PHP 5.1 and in seems 4.4.1 are adding another BC break one that could break anyone using a object based database library within there custom session handler, and also make any registered shutdown function useless if it relys on objects, although the bugs focus on the session aspect of things.

This isn't something you can just "Document" away like they are trying to do.

Basically they are saying any user made or PHP made object is useless during the shutdown phase of PHP.

I could definitely see this issue causing some headaches for a lot of people out there. For more information on this issue, check out the bug report he refers to...

In a new note from DynamicWebPages today, there's an announcement of the posting of PHP 5.1.0RC5 over on Ilia's download site.

Ilia Alshanetsky, release manager of the coming version 5.1, released today the fifth Release Candidate in the 5.1 series. In the last RC there were still some errors that were found, but they should be repaired with this RC. Like always you all are called for testing.

You can download this latest release candidate from Ilia's downloads.php.net site...

In a new note from DynamicWebPages today, there's an announcement of the posting of PHP 5.1.0RC5 over on Ilia's download site.

Ilia Alshanetsky, release manager of the coming version 5.1, released today the fifth Release Candidate in the 5.1 series. In the last RC there were still some errors that were found, but they should be repaired with this RC. Like always you all are called for testing.

You can download this latest release candidate from Ilia's downloads.php.net site...

According to this post on Mike's blog today, it's "time to say goodbye" to curly braces.

Yeah, it may come suddenly, but it's time to say good bye to curly braces used as string indexing operator.

PHP-5.1 will issue an E_STRICT error, and PHP-6 will probably don't know this syntax any more.

I don't know why, but I've got some strange sentimental feelings, maybe because I've never used those other brackets for string indexing...

The method he's talking about here is the $string{0} format, and it's making way for a unified string/array operator. It won't break things badly, though - in PHP 5.1 it'll just toss out a non-fatal error to let you know. But watch out, by PHP6, this functionality will be gone...

According to this post on Mike's blog today, it's "time to say goodbye" to curly braces.

Yeah, it may come suddenly, but it's time to say good bye to curly braces used as string indexing operator.

PHP-5.1 will issue an E_STRICT error, and PHP-6 will probably don't know this syntax any more.

I don't know why, but I've got some strange sentimental feelings, maybe because I've never used those other brackets for string indexing...

The method he's talking about here is the $string{0} format, and it's making way for a unified string/array operator. It won't break things badly, though - in PHP 5.1 it'll just toss out a non-fatal error to let you know. But watch out, by PHP6, this functionality will be gone...