xref: /web-php/releases/4_2_0.php (revision f1cb7e74) 
1<?php
2$_SERVER['BASE_PAGE'] = 'releases/4_2_0.php';
3include_once __DIR__ . '/../include/prepend.inc';
4site_header("PHP 4.2.0 Release Announcement");
5?>
6
7<h1>PHP 4.2.0 Release Announcement</h1>
8
9<p>
10 After an orderly QA process, PHP 4.2.0 is <a href="/downloads.php">out</a>!<br>
11 [ <a href="/releases/4_2_0_fr.php">Version Fran&ccedil;aise</a> ]
12</p>
13
14<h2>External variables</h2>
15
16<p>
17 The biggest change in PHP 4.2.0 concerns variable handling. <strong>External
18 variables (from the environment, the HTTP request, cookies or the web server)
19 are no longer registered in the global scope by default.</strong> The preferred
20 method of accessing these external variables is by using the new Superglobal
21 arrays, introduced in PHP 4.1.0. More information about this change:</p>
22
23<ul>
24 <li><a href="/variables.predefined">PHP Manual: Predefined variables</a></li>
25 <li><a href="/releases/4_1_0.php">The PHP 4.1.0 release announcement</a></li>
26 <li><a href="http://www.zend.com/zend/art/art-oertli.php">Thomas Oertli's article on secure programming in PHP</a></li>
27</ul>
28
29<h2>Compatibility</h2>
30
31<p>
32 The Apache Software Foundation recently released their first
33 General Availability version of Apache 2. PHP 4.2.0 will have
34 <strong>EXPERIMENTAL</strong> support for this version. You can
35 build a DSO module for Apache 2 with --with-apxs2. We do
36 <strong>not</strong> recommend that you use this in a production
37 environment.
38</p>
39<p>
40 PHP 4.2.0 still lacks certain key features on Mac OS X and
41 Darwin, and isn't officially supported by the PHP Group on
42 these platforms. Specifically, building PHP as a dynamically
43 loaded Apache module isn't supported at this time. PHP 4.3.0,
44 due to be released in August, 2002, will be the first PHP
45 release to officially support Mac OS X. It, along with future
46 Mac OS X and Apache releases, will enable full feature parity
47 with other PHP platforms. <strong>Update:</strong>
48 <a href="http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/">Instructions on
49 overcoming these limitations</a>
50</p>
51
52<h2>Improvements</h2>
53
54<p>PHP 4.2.0 includes several improvements:</p>
55
56<ul>
57 <li>
58  <strong>External variables (from the environment, the HTTP request, cookies or
59  the web server) are no longer registered as global variables</strong>
60 </li>
61 <li>Overhaul of the sockets extension</li>
62 <li>Highly improved performance with file uploads</li>
63 <li>
64  The satellite and mailparse extensions were moved to PECL and are no longer
65  bundled with the official PHP release
66 </li>
67 <li>The posix extension has been cleaned up</li>
68 <li>iconv handling has been improved</li>
69 <li>
70  Output buffering support, which was introduced in PHP 4.1.0 has
71  been stabilized
72 </li>
73 <li>Improved performance and stability of the domxml extension</li>
74 <li>New multibyte regular expression support</li>
75 <li><strong>LOTS</strong> of fixes and new functions</li>
76</ul>
77
78<p>
79 For a full list of changes in PHP 4.2.0,
80 <a href="/ChangeLog-4.php#4.2.0">see the ChangeLog</a>.
81</p>
82
83<?php site_footer(); ?>
84