PHP 4.0 Beta 4 released

The PHP Group is pleased to announce the availability of Beta 4 of PHP 4.0.

This development release is intended to be the final beta version;  If 
there are no significant show stoppers, PHP 4.0 will be wrapped up for 
release in the near future.

PHP 4.0 features a lot of new features, bug fixes and performance 
enhancements.  Some of the highlights are:

* Built-in XML support.  The expat library is now bundled with PHP.  Thanks 
goes to James Clark's for letting us bundle his package in the distribution!
* Better and more reliable support for Microsoft IIS and PWS, under both 
Windows NT and Windows 9x.  Performance of the ISAPI module under Windows 
has been improved by 30%-150%.
* Introduced PEAR, the PHP Extension and Add-on Repository.  PEAR is a code 
repository for common PHP extensions and library code.  Currently, the 
primary focus is on a database abstraction layer.  PEAR is dedicated to 
Stig's little new-born daughter, Malin Bakken.
* Introduced a specialized memory cache for common data types in Zend (in 
plain English - performance was boosted).
* Introduced a new language keyword, 'use', equivalent to require(), but 
guarantees that the file is only loaded once (used in PEAR).
* Finished work on the Web Server Abstraction Layer.  PHP's interface to 
the Web server is now completely abstracted, and it should be extremely 
easy to add support for any Web server that has a module interface.
* Improved the built-in session module.
* Added support for macros in the php.ini file (e.g., you can now use 
error_reporting = E_ALL&~E_NOTICE, instead of error_reporting=7).

In addition to all of that, *lots* of bugs have been fixed, and a lots of 
functions have been added.  A full list of changes is enclosed at the end 
of this letter.  It'll also be a good idea to take a look at the 
php.ini-dist file, to see the many new directives that were added or 
modified in there.

We've worked a lot on Beta 4 to ensure that it's stable and reliable, and 
that it lives up to the expectations of PHP 4.0.  We encourage all users of 
previous betas of PHP 4.0 to upgrade, and all users of PHP 3.0 to (at the 
very least) begin planning their upgrade.  My personal opinion is that PHP 
4.0 Beta 4 is the best, most reliable version of PHP that's available.

PHP 4.0 is available as a source package, and as a binary package for 
Windows, at:
http://www.php.net/version4/downloads.php

Happy PHPing!

Zeev



20 February 2000, Version 4.0 Beta 4
- Introduced $HTTP_POST_FILES[], that contains information about files uploaded
   through HTTP upload (Zeev)
- Made PHP work under Microsoft Personal Web Server, under both Windows NT
   workstation and Windows 95 (Zeev)
- Made multipart/form-data content obey to the variables_order directive (Zeev)
- Updated the browscap module to work with PHP 4.0 (Zeev)
- Recover gracefully in ISAPI after the client prematurely presses STOP (Andi)
- Fix bug in unset() on array offsets which are referenced more than once
   (Andi, Zend library)
- Improved ISAPI module - it should no longer be necessary to set PHP as
   an ISAPI filter, only as an ISAPI extension, unless you wish to perform
   authentication using PHP.  This didn't yet get enough testing, but it
   should work (Zeev)
- Fixed RFC1867 file upload under Windows (Zeev)
- Initital support for pdflib 2.20 (Uwe)
- Added PostgreSQL support for DB (Rui Hirokawa <[email protected]>)
- Re-introduced "none" for disabling auto_prepend/append_file (Stig)
- Added DB/storage (Stig, PEAR)
- Introduced DB warnings (Stig, PEAR)
- Fix overrun in strip_tags (Stas)
- Fixed crash in strip_tags() and related functions. (Thies)
- Workaround for bogus POST-Data from IE/Mac. (Thies)
   Patch by Alain Malek <[email protected]>
- Finished the server abstraction layer;  All of the PHP code is now shared
   across different servers (Apache, CGI, IIS, etc.), except for thin
   interface modules (Zeev)
- Added NULL-support in gettype(). (Thies)
- base64_decode() will decode POST data correct. (Thies)
   Patch submitted by: Turadg Aleahmad <[email protected]>
- Much more work on domxml. Build xml tree, create xml doc works (Uwe)
- Made foreach() work on objects. (Thies, Zend library)
- Added domxml extension based on libxml, still little functionality (Uwe)
- Fixed memory corruption in fgetss(), strip_tags() and gzgetss() (Zeev)
- Updated calendar dynamic library to work with PHP 4. (Evan)
- Added strncmp() function, courtesy of Walter. (Andrei)
- Made the output of var_dump() more informative. (Thies)
- Fixed some OCIBindByName() problems. (Thies)
- Protect the ISAPI module against exceptions.  Stack overflows in scripts are
   now nicely detected and handled (Zeev)
- Fixed possible buffer-overflow in base64_decode. (Thies)
- Fixed possible buffer-overflow in setcookie(). (Thies)
- Fixed signal() bug that could cause the Apache master process to
   die. (Thies)
- Added session_set_cookie_params() function. (Andrei)
- If header information is sent after output has already been sent, the warning
   message will now state the filename and line number at which the first 
output
   was made (Zeev)
- Added the XML Expat library to the standard PHP source distribution thanks
   to its author James Clark (Andi & Zeev)
- Added XML support to the default Win32 build (Andi & Zeev)
- Added socket_get_status() function. Renamed:
     set_socket_timeout() -> socket_set_timeout()
     set_socket_blocking() -> socket_set_blocking(). (Andrei)
- Added realpath() function. (Andrei)
- mktime interprets years in the range 0-70 now as 2000-2070. You can
   continue to specify the complete year (i.e. 1920) (Sascha)
- Added the ability to control the environment variables the user is allowed
   to change in Safe Mode, using INI directives (Zeev)
- Fixed a crash bug in strtr() working on large input strings (Zeev)
- Ora_GetColumn()/Ora_FetchInto() now return NULL for NULL-Columns. (Thies)
- OCI8 now supports binding of NULL-values. Module cleanups. (Thies)
- Added ability to set timeout on socket read operations through
   set_socket_timeout() function. (Andrei)
- Added implicit_flush INI directive (Zeev)
- Added implicit_flush() to control whether flush() should be called
   implicitly after any output (Zeev)
- Fixed a crash in pfsockopen() (Zeev)
- Fixed a possible crash in phpinfo() (Zeev)
- Added register_argc_argv INI directive, to allow to selectively disable
   the declaration of the $argv and $argc variables for increased
   performance (Zeev)
- Added $HTTP_ENV_VARS[] and $HTTP_SERVER_VARS[] support, which similarly
   to $HTTP_GET_VARS[], contain environment and server variables.  Setting
   register_globals to Off will now also prevent registration of the
   environment and server variables into the global scope (Zeev)
- Renamed gpc_globals INI directive to register_globals (Zeev)
- Introduced variables_order that deprecates gpc_order, and allows control
   over the server and environment variables, in addition to GET/POST/Cookies
   (Zeev)
- new function cpdf_set_document_limits() (Uwe)
- Applied safe-mode patch to popen(). (Patch by Kristian Köhntopp)
- str_repeat() now returns correct length. (Thies)
- Don't assume libz and libpng are installed for the GD checks (Rasmus)
- Implemented support for <boolean> and <null> types according
   to WDDX version 1.0 (Andrei)
- Made var_dump()/serialize()/unserialize() NULL aware. (Thies)
- Added new NULL constant (Zeev, Zend library)
- Fixed -c support in the standalone CGI binary (Zeev)
- Increased PHP's performance by 5-15% using a new memory cache (Andi & Zeev,
   Zend library)
- Improved the php.ini reader to support constants and bitwise operators (Zeev)
- Fixed strrev() to no longer modify arg1. (Thies)
- Fixed buffer overruns in iptcembed(). (Thies)
- Fixed a bug in ODBC error reporting (Zeev)
- Added PHP_Logo_GUID() and Zend_Logo_GUID() functions, that return the GUIDs
   of the PHP and Zend logos used in phpinfo() (Zeev)
- Added GNU Pth support (Sascha, TSRM library)
- Removed select(), fd_set() and fd_isset() - will be reimplemented soon! 
(Thies)
- Improved Win32 performance significantly by using different mutexes (Zeev,
   TSRM library)
- Made quotemeta() and preg_quote() binary-safe. (Andrei)
- Added UDP support in fsockopen(). (Evan)
- Added --disable-pear option (Andrei)
- Renamed libzend repository to Zend (Zeev)
- Added support for thttpd (Sascha)
- Added session.cache_limiter and cache_expire options (Sascha)
- Restored the PHP_VERSION and PHP_OS constants (Zeev)
- Added get_loaded_extensions(), extension_loaded(), and
   get_extension_funcs() functions. (Andrei)
- Added date/time stamping to PHP error log file. (Andrei, Joey)
- Added is_subclass_of() function (Andrei, Zend library)
- Implemented count_chars(). (Thies)
- Added class_exists() function (Andrei, Zend library)
- Made strspn() and strcspn() binary-safe. (Andrei)
- Added array_multisort() function. (Andrei)
- Made pageinfo.c thread-safe (Sascha)
- Made implode() binary-safe (Andrei)
- Made strstr(), stristr(), and ucwords() binary-safe() (Andrei)
- Made strtoupper(), strtolower(), substr_replace() binary-safe. (Andrei)
- Fix a crash in the Apache syntax highlighting mode (Zeev)
- Report all ODBC error's not just the one on the top of the stack (lurcher)
- OCI8 now returns NULL values in LONG columns correct. (Thies)
- Added support for a C-like assert() function. (Thies)
- Added CyberCash support. (Evan)
- Made explode() binary-safe. (Thies)
- Made strpos() binary-safe. (Thies)
- Added XML_Set_Object() function, now you can use the XML-Parser from
   within an object. (Thies)
- Session vars are now decoded into $HTTP_STATE_VARS[] array and the
   globals, depending on track_vars and gpc_globals settings (Andrei)
- Added get_used_files() function - returns a hash mapping the use()'d files
   to their full path (Zeev)
- PHP 4 scripts will now obey the max_execution_time setting and actually
   time out (Rasmus)
- Added configure command to phpinfo() output (Stig)
- Added optional socket path to the mysql_?connect() functions (Rasmus)
- Made mysql and gd work as shared extensions again (Stig)
- Make the global GET/POST/Cookie variables and their $HTTP_*_VARS[] 
counterparts
   be references to each other (Zeev)
- Added support for the 'use' keyword - behaves like 'require', but will not
   use the same file more than once (Andi & Zeev, Zend library)
- Added check to see if a persistent connection is still valid with the
   ODBC interface before reusing ([email protected])
- Added DBMaker support (patch by Pax Tsai <[email protected]>)
- Renamed "PECL" to "PEAR" (PHP Extension and Add-on Repository) (Stig)
- buildconf now uses build.mk (Stig)
- Disable symlinks to urls (Rasmus)
- Informix driver now reflects version of ESQL/C used  (Danny)
- Modified session_register() to take variable number of arguments (Andrei)
- Fixed file descriptor leak in thread safe mode (Zeev, Zend library)
- Added select(), fd_set() and fd_isset() (Evan)
- cpdf support has been ported from php3, needs ClibPDF 2.x (Uwe)
- Fixed a leak when using automatic output buffering (Zeev)
- Introduced PECL - PHP Extension and Code Library
   (prounounced "pickle") (Stig)
- Fixed inconsistencies in the implementation of here-docs (Andi & Zeev, Zend
   library)
- Fixed a problem with constant class-member initializations (Andi & Zeev,
   Zend library)
- Fixed float-compare in min(),max(),a[r]sort(),[r]sort() (Thies)
- Implemented get_html_translation_table() function (Thies)
- Implemented array_flip() function. Returns input-array with key, value
   flipped (Thies)
- Added Berkeley DB3 support in DBA (Sascha)
- Implemented 2-Arg version of strtr($str,$translation_array). This can be used
   to revert what htmlspecialchars() did (Thies)
- Fixed mem-overwrite in XML_Parse_Into_Struct (Thies)
- Added substr_replace() function (Andrei)

--
Zeev Suraski   <[email protected]>  http://www.zend.com/