Following along with the non-alpha PHP code that Gareth Heyes recently posted about, Alex Inführ has created some of his own using only dollar signs, underscores, equals, plus and parentheses.

I used the following charset: $_=+(); As you can see only 7 chars. In the end the function log will be created,because this won't exceed the memory limit. In the beginning I created the php function assert and it was 99 mb large php file, way too big to get executed.

He uses a few tricks to get the language to create strings (counting to infinity), changing the letters in the resulting string, He includes the steps in the process and a large block of the non-alpha PHP code at the end of the post, a 46KByte block that echoes "log(12)".

Ever wanted to know more about the individuals in the PHP community around you? You're in luck! The "Seven Things" meme has been zipping its way through the PHP community with some great results. I've tried to get together a list of the posts made so far - it's not going to get them all, but its a start. Those linked in the top list are ones tagged and with a blog post. The normal list at the bottom are those that are tagged but haven't gotten around to writing their Things:

Tony Bibbs Keith Casey Matthew Turland Matthew Weier O'Phinney Davey Shafik Chris Cornutt Stefan Koopmanschap Ivo Jansch Elizabeth Smith Derick Rethans Michelangelo van Dam Padraic Brady Elizabeth Naramore Vidyut Luther Lars Strojny Ben Ramsey Brian DeShong Remi Woler Manuel Pichler Marco Tabini Cal Evans Jon Whitcraft Jeff Jones Greg Sherwood Chris Hartjes Andi Gutmans Roy Ganor Chuck Burgess Nili Gafni Jason Sweat Rafael Dohms Tobias Gies Wez Furlong Sara Golemon Brian Moon Jason Sweat Raj Shekhar

Lorna Mitchell Marcus Börger Johannes Schlüter Guilherme Blanco Eli White Timothy Boronczyk Paul Reinheimer Vidyut Luther Laura Thomson Patrick Allaert Maggie Nelson David Soria Parra Theo Schlossnagle Jani Hartikainen Paul Reinheimer Lars Jankowfsky Tobias Schlitt Mark Karpeles Jay Pipes Sebastian Nohn Brandon Savage Jan Lehnardt Christopher Jones Jakob Westhoff Lukas Smith Sean Coates Nils Langner Chris Shiflett Ligaya Turmelle Andrei Zmievski James McLean Zac Greant Christian Weiske Jan Kneschke Michael Kimsal Ken Guest Kae Verens Jamie Hemmett Christian Flickinger

And here's the slackers:

• Joe LeBlanc
• Ed Finkler
• Greg Beaver
• Bill Karwin
• Terry Chay
• Aaron Wormus
• Graham Christensen
• Nate Abele
• Max Horvath
• Johanna Cherry
• Beth Tucker
• Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson
• Marc de Visser
• Joe Stagner
• Ralph Schindler
• Wil Sinclair
• Barry Austin
• FoxyDot
• Eric David
• Pierre-Alain Joye
• John Coggeshall
• Stas Malyshev
• Gaylord Aulke
• David Coallier
• Joe Stump
• Josh Eichorn
• Harry Fuecks
• Jeff Moore

If you're one of the ones that hasn't posted yet and you get around to it or if I've left someone's post out of the list, let me know and I'll update the list.

The IBM developerWorks website has a few suggestions - seven of them, in fact - that they think can help make you a better PHP programmer.

With PHP's object-oriented (OO) language features, if you aren't already creating your applications with OO principles in mind, these seven habits will help you get started in the transition between procedural programming and OO programming.

Each of the seven OOP habits have more details below them, but here's the short list:

• Be modest.
• Be a good neighbor.
• Avoid looking at Medusa.
• Embrace the weakest link.
• You're rubber; I'm glue.
• Keep it in the family.
• Think in patterns.

In each there's a "bad habit" and a "good habit" to explain the concept a bit more fully, everything from error handling to interfaces.

As Sara Golemon points out on her blog today, it's the 7th birthday of the very first release of PHP4:

Check the official releases page for yourself. PHP 4.0.0 was released seven years ago today. Make a cake, blow out some candles, and put on your birthday suit (no not that one); Now give that brat a kick out the door, he's been loafing around on your server for too long.

Of course, if you're still stuck in the PHP4 days, there's the latest - PHP 4.4.7 - or, if you're ready to join the rest of the world, PHP 5.2.2.

Kore Nordman has been making even further advancements in the development behind the PEAR Image_3D library - this time, he looks at raytracing in PHP.

I was always writing, that implementing a raytracer (or the better german description) in PHP would be far to slow. And then, two days ago, I had the feeling I should prove this ... this was also the way Image_3D was born. With the infrastructure Image_3D offers, all the existing models, the abstraction etc. it wasn't such a big thing. You mainly need to write a short algorithm which gets the intersection point for a polygon with a line, and that's it. For sure, you should optimze the algorithm a bit. And it is really fun to implement such a simple mathematical model like raytracing is.

He talks about some of the problems that raytracers don't have that normal renderers do (shadows, reflections, etc) and notes that the images display in the post took about seven minutes to render on his system. He proved that it can work, but notes that it supports his original hypothesis - rendering like this with PHP is just too slow.

The start of this week marks the beginning of the "Promo Week" over at php|architect, with deals on all sorts of great things including discounts off of the Zend Certification and discounts on their training courses.

The holidays are a time to spend with the family... but the New Year is a time to get some of the best deals from php|a!

Once a year'"and only once a year'"we bring you a series of special one-day-only deals on all our products and services that you will not want to miss!

Today is the start of the promotion, and the deal today involves a $50 (USD) discount off of the Zend Certification exam. Here's a few of the others (that aren't surprises):

• Wednesday, Jan. 4th - a free PDF
• Friday, Jan. 6th - 50% off of training classes
• Sunday, Jan. 8th - PDFLib Book launch offer
• Monday, Jan. 9th - a php|tek special offer

So, keep your eyes here for the surprise promos through out the week!

php|architect magazine has some great new promotions that they've started to close out this year (and start up the new one) with a bang.

The holidays are a time to spend with your family... but the new year is the time to take advantage of our once-a-year "promofest"!

Starting January 3rd, 2006, and continuing until January 9th, we'll be announcing a new one-day-only promotion every day.

The promotion will culminate on January 9th with a special discount on all conference packages to celebrate the announcement of the official schedule.

Some of the promos will include: subscription discounts, special pricing on books, huge training price cuts, and even the release of a brand new book - "Beginning Pdflib". So, keep an eye out and watch for those promos!

In his latest post today, John Cox takes a look at one of the latest posts from the SitePoint PHP blog - the Top 7 PHP Security Blunders.

This morning I read the Top 7 PHP Security Blunders which contained (at least in my mind) a few questionable comments about PHP security. Luckily for the early readers of the article, there was a very long comment by comments were a very nice critique of the article which also corrects a few obvious mistakes within the article itself.

The comments have now been pushed off the main article to the forum, (which is a shame) but as a developer, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not also taking the time to read the counter-point. They are insightful without being inflammatory.

The comments by Chris that he makes reference to can be found here in the SitePoint forums...

On the SitePoint PHP blog today, Pax Dickinson shares with us the "Top 7 PHP Security Blunders" as he sees them.

In this article, I'll detail many of the common PHP programming mistakes that can result in security holes. By showing you what not to do, and how each particular flaw can be exploited, I hope that you'll understand not just how to avoid these particular mistakes, but also why they result in security vulnerabilities. Understanding each possible flaw will help you avoid making the same mistakes in your PHP applications.

His list includes:

• Unvalidated Input Errors
• Access Control Flaws
• Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Flaws
• Data Handling Errors

There's more listed, so be sure to check out the rest of the article - each item is explained and on some, sample code is included where it makes sense...