Backward Incompatible Changes
Although most existing PHP 5 code should work without changes, please take
note of some backward incompatible changes:
-
The newer internal parameter parsing API has been applied across all the
extensions bundled with PHP 5.3.x. This parameter parsing API causes
functions to return
NULL
when passed incompatible parameters. There are
some exceptions to this rule, such as the get_class()
function, which will continue to return FALSE
on error.
-
clearstatcache() no longer clears the realpath cache by
default.
-
realpath() is now fully platform-independent.
Consequence of this is that invalid relative paths such as
__FILE__ . "/../x" do not work anymore.
-
The call_user_func() family of functions now propagate
$this even if the callee is a parent class.
-
The array functions natsort(),
natcasesort(), usort(),
uasort(), uksort(),
array_flip(), and array_unique() no
longer accept objects passed as arguments. To apply these functions to an
object, cast the object to an array first.
-
The behaviour of functions with by-reference parameters called by value has
changed. Where previously the function would accept the by-value argument,
a fatal error is now emitted. Any previous code passing constants or
literals to functions expecting references, will need altering to assign
the value to a variable before calling the function.
-
The new mysqlnd library necessitates the use of MySQL 4.1's newer 41-byte
password format. Continued use of the old 16-byte passwords will cause
mysql_connect() and similar functions to emit the error,
"mysqlnd cannot connect to MySQL 4.1+ using old
authentication."
-
The new mysqlnd library does not read mysql configuration files
(my.cnf/my.ini), as the older libmysql library does. If your code relies on
settings in the configuration file, you can load it explicitly with the
mysqli_options() function. Note that this means the
PDO specific constants
PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_READ_DEFAULT_FILE
and PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_READ_DEFAULT_GROUP
are not defined
if MySQL support in PDO is compiled with mysqlnd.
-
The trailing / has been removed from the SplFileInfo
class and other related directory classes.
-
The __toString() magic
method can no longer accept arguments.
-
The magic methods
__get(),
__set(),
__isset(),
__unset(), and
__call() must always
be public and can no longer be static. Method signatures are now enforced.
-
The __call()
magic method is now invoked on access to private and protected methods.
-
func_get_arg(), func_get_args() and
func_num_args() can no longer be called from the
outermost scope of a file that has been included by calling
include or require from within
a function in the calling file.
-
An emulation layer for the MHASH extension to wrap around the Hash extension
have been added. However not all the algorithms are covered, notable the
s2k hashing algorithm. This means that s2k hashing is no longer available
as of PHP 5.3.0.
The following keywords are now reserved and may not be used in function,
class, etc. names.