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PHP 6 – The Magic is Gone

// March 14th, 2006 // Technology Bits

Granted PHP is only currently at 5.1.2 as the stable release, but we should always look forward to the future. The future is PHP 6. One of the big changes coming in 6 is a removal of many things that make PHP “magic”.

According to ThePimp,net, register_globals, gpc_magic_quotes, and safe_mode have all been removed.

The register_globals change is an especially welcome enforcement. In PHP 4 it was discouraged, in PHP 5 it was deprecated. To be able to tell people it will be gone, not allowed, no other option in PHP 6 will give us leverage to finally eliminate the remaining stuff relying on register globals.

The removal of magic_quotes is more of a surprise to me. I previously was unaware that relying on this was discouraged, deprecated, or even bad practice. If the reasoning for removing this is just to eliminate the “voodoo” aspects of PHP, I can certainly agree with this. However, I’m still a bit uncertain as to why this is better. Although, I guess that it will simplify the need to strip_slashes all the time when repopulating fields and whatnot. Other thoughts?

Thankfully we haven’t been using safe_mode, so this one is a non-issue.

Discussion of these major (much needed) changes in PHP came down from Rasmus Lerdorf himself back in August.

globals, gpc_magic_quotes, magic, php, php6, programming, register_globals, safe_mode, web, web development, PHP, rasmus lerdorf

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