Documentation for PHP 5

Introduction

The PHP 5 documentation was removed from the PHP Manual in September 2020, approximately two years after PHP 5 reached its end of life. However, we have provided downloadable copies of the manual for anyone who would need it, as well as a link to a hosted third-party version.

PHP 5 Manual

An attempt has been made to preserve as much documentation related to PHP 5 as possible. Despite this, we don't have a nice, separate manual covering only PHP 5. The reason for this is how our documentation is structured. Even so, the linked copies describe more aspects of PHP 5 than the actual manual described in September 2020 (e.g. it covers more PHP 5 extensions).

• You can download a copy in the documentation archives.
• You can also find the PHP 5 legacy manual on the Zend site, which was created from the official archives. This version of the manual is maintained by Zend and not the PHP Documentation Group. Any questions about its content should be reported via the "Report a Bug" links on the appropriate pages.

Please remember that these documentation versions should not be used in everyday development, unless you are maintaining PHP 5 applications. These versions lacks many topics connected with newer PHP versions and are not updated anymore.

Migrating to supported PHP version

All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade their environments to newest PHP version. Please read our guides for Migrating from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.0 for more information.