On the Make Me Pulse blog, there's a look at PHP6's support of Unicode in the SPL (Standard PHP Library) TextIterator handler.

I've just install the last version of PHP6 dev and I've decided to test the famous new feature, the PHP Unicode Support. I will not explain new things about PHP6 or Unicode or TextIterator, it's just my discoveries test on this features.

He steps through the process he followed - enabling Unicode support, testing various output methods (including just an echo and using the TextIterator) as well as some of the manipulation methods (next/first/current) that can be used to get certain characters out of a string.

Stefan Mischook has posted another video tutorial to help developers get started in their PHP travels. This time it covers how to turn on errors when using the popular WAMP installation package.

Within a WAMP installation, I ran into a little issue today when trying to change php.ini's 'display_errors' property. By default WAMP installs with 'display_errors' to 'Off' - This is a pain-in-the-ass setting when trying to write new PHP code because errors don't get displayed in the browser window

He includes the solution in the post but links as well to the video tutorial to show you exactly how it's done.

As this post over on APress' Inside Open Source blog today, there's a discussion that's been going on over on the php-dev mailing list about namespaces in PHP6.

I find both sides of the argument quite compelling, and while FWIW I'm in favor of including them in the next release, I'm somewhat indifferent to the matter. According to one of the very latest messages in the thread, Zeev Suraski confirms they simplistic support will likely be enabled.

That's Jason Gilmore talking there, and he goes on to reinforce something Rasmus Lerdorf has said about namespaces in the past - they'll implement them when they find the right way (in the PHP spirit) to do it.