Zend Weekly Summaries Issue #44

TLK: Autocasting bug
NEW: Arabic documentation
NEW: SAPRFC extension
TLK: Zend Engine 2 – PHP 4.1 or 5.0?
NEW: Replacement C scanners
NEW: pow() function
TLK: snapshots
TLK: lxr.php.net
NEW: PHP for VMS
TLK: news.php.net
NEW: XML-RPC and PHP errors
NEW: libxslt support
NEW: YATS extension

TLK: Autocasting bug

A small correction to last week’s information on the “autocasting” bug. The
problem, apparently, is when operations are conducted on negative integers — not
with the initial assignment.

Jeroen van Wolffelaar, who kindly notified me of my error, said it best in his
e-mail: “-2000000000 + -2000000000 for example will give a bogus result, since
-2000000000 can be stored as a whole number, but -4000000000 cannot. It
should have been auto-converted to a floating point number, but that didn’t
happen.”

Thanks to Jeroen for setting this issue straight.

NEW: Arabic documentation

Nabeel AboHamam notified the list of his interest in porting the "http://www.zend.com/zend/aboutphp.php">PHP documentation to Arabic. Anyone who would like to help
Nabeel with his effort should contact the developers’ list.

NEW: SAPRFC extension

Eduard Koucky has released his extension for talking to SAP R/3, named SAPRFC.
Features include SAP R/3 connectivity and the ability for SAP to call PHP functions.
The announcement can be found "http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200107/msg00745.html">here, and you can visit the official Web
site at "http://saprfc.sourceforge.net/">http://saprfc.sourceforge.net/.

TLK: Zend Engine 2.0 – PHP 4.1 or 5.0?

With last week’s big announcement about the second Zend Engine, there has been
some talk about a future release of PHP that will rely on it.

The question is: should there be a new version of PHP with the incompatible
changes the development team have been wanting for a while, like more consistent
function names (PHP 4.1?). Or do they simply go straight to version 5.0 with the new
Zend Engine, and include all the changes?

I’ll have more on this in the coming weeks.

NEW: Replacement C scanners

Sascha Schumann has released his replacement
for the flex-based scanners found in the current version of PHP. Written with
portability as the first priority, the code still manages to come out quicker than
the existing implementation.

Look here for Sascha’s initial
announcement. Later in the week, he released a new (feature complete) version that
can be downloaded "http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200107/msg00718.html">here.

NEW: pow() function

Jeroen van Wolffelaar has made some major fixes to the pow()
function, especially regarding the handling of fractions. Expect this to be included
in PHP 4.0.7. If you’d like to try it before then, Jeroen’s original post is
here.

TLK: snapshots

For those who noticed the problem, snapshots are now being created again. A
permissions problem on the server was stopping this from happening, but it has now
been resolved.

TLK: lxr.php.net

As we go to press, it looks like lxr.php.net is back up and running. Thanks to
Andrei Zmievski for notifying the list.

NEW: PHP for VMS

Dave Jones has completed a port of PHP to the VMS OS. A full description of his
work, which required changes in 29 files, can be found "http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200107/msg00121.html">here. You will also find a link to his Web
site, which contains a download with all the required patches.

TLK: news.php.net

The PHP nntp server is up and running, but this time it is running custom
software. If you have any problems with your client, "http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200107/msg00539.html">look at Jim Winstead’s announcement. The
code for the new server will be available soon from http://news.php.net.

NEW: XML-RPC and PHP errors

If you have written an XML-RPC server in PHP before, you know how frustrating it
can be when an error occurs on the PHP end — the RPC client gags due to a malformed
response.

Now, thanks to Matt Allen, that frustration is gone with his new patch that makes
PHP return errors as a valid XML-RPC response rather than text or html. "http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200107/msg00642.html">Read Matt’s post for the
patch.

NEW: libxslt support

Raphael Vallazza has added preliminary libxslt support to Sterling Hughes’ new xslt
extension. Libxslt is best known for its use in the Gnome project (but is not
dependent on it).

NEW: YATS extension

Dan Libby, author of the XML-RPC extension, has released another exciting bit of
code. Yet Another Template System is a PHP extension in the spirit of FastTemplates
- it allows the user to separate content and style.

To find out more, take a look at "http://www.zend.com/lists/php-dev/200107/msg00249.html">Dan’s original announcement, or wander
over to the YATS Web site.