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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] What is the current state of PHP6?
From: lester@lsces.co.uk (Lester Caine)

Andrei Zmievski wrote:
> Lester Caine wrote:
>> I KEEP asking what is holding up making a beta release of PHP6, and I 
>> see nothing in the 2005 meeting that is anything more than a 
>> restructure and recompile using unicode as the base. MOST of the other 
>> things are just removing things that are now normally switched off 
>> anyway. And I mean a BETA since the thing has been in alpha for 2 years!
>>
>> I will ask this question again as I cant find ANYTHING on the php.net 
>> site to answer it. *IS* PHP6 going to be unicode ONLY internally are 
>> is half of the problem here that THAT decision still has not been agreed?
> 
> The current state is indeed not very well documented, but your best bet 
> is to look in the discussion archives for the thread called "why we must 
> get rid of unicode.semantics switch ASAP". I think there was an 
> agreement that PHP 6 should  not have that switch, but whether PHP 6 
> will have binary strings on by default or unicode ones is another thing. 
> I think most of people were leaning to having BC maintained as much as 
> possible and thus having binary strings on (which is not my view, but 
> that's another matter).

Then I am probably with you on that. Given the maze that binary strings 
create, I was hoping that we would kill it dead and simply work with a single 
character set ;) Translating a set of files TO unicode is not a complicated 
matter, I have to backup and restore the databases to switch to unicode anyway.

> We also discussed building a set of testing and migration tools (also in 
> that thread, I believe), which would enable us to make sure that there 
> are as few BC issues as possible. However, no one has stepped up to do 
> that yet. If you'd like to help in any way, please let us know.

If I can create a PHP6 installation that uses nothing but unicode then it will 
be worth the exercise. If there is still an on going war requiring that all of 
the code page crap is still supported then I'll wait for PHP7 :( And soldier 
on with PHP5 for now.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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