Backward Incompatible Changes

Although most existing PHP 4 code should work without changes, you should pay attention to the following backward incompatible changes:

• strrpos() and strripos() now use the entire string as a needle.

• Illegal use of string offsets causes E_ERROR instead of E_WARNING.

• array_merge() was changed to accept only arrays. If a non-array variable is passed, a E_WARNING will be thrown for every such parameter. Be careful because your code may start emitting E_WARNING out of the blue.

• PATH_TRANSLATED server variable is no longer set implicitly under Apache2 SAPI in contrast to the situation in PHP 4, where it is set to the same value as the SCRIPT_FILENAME server variable when it is not populated by Apache. This change was made to comply with the CGI specification. Please refer to bug #23610 for further information.

• The T_ML_CONSTANT constant is no longer defined by the Tokenizer extension. If error_reporting is set to E_ALL, PHP will generate a notice. Although the T_ML_CONSTANT was never used at all, it was defined in PHP 4. In both PHP 4 and PHP 5 // and /* */ are resolved as the T_COMMENT constant. However the PHPDoc style comments /** */ ,which starting PHP 5 are parsed by PHP, are recognized as T_DOC_COMMENT.

• $_SERVER should be populated with argc and argv if variables_order includes "S". If you have specifically configured your system to not create $_SERVER, then of course it shouldn't be there. The change was to always make argc and argv available in the CLI version regardless of the variables_order setting. As in, the CLI version will now always populate the global $argc and $argv variables.

• An object with no properties is no longer considered "empty".

• Classes must be declared before used.

Example B-1. strrpos() and strripos() now use the entire string as a needle <?php var_dump(strrpos('ABCDEF','DEF')); //int(3) var_dump(strrpos('ABCDEF','DAF')); //bool(false) ?>

Example B-2. An object with no properties is no longer considered "empty" <?php class test { } $t = new test(); var_dump(empty($t)); // echo bool(false) if (!$t) {     // Will be executed } ?>

The following example was valid in PHP 4, although it will produce a fatal error in PHP 5.

Example B-3. Classes must be declared before used <?php $test = new fubar(); $test->barfu(); class fubar {     function barfu() {         echo 'fubar';     } } ?>