PHP 5.2.17

PHP is a server-side scripting language, mainly designed for producing dynamic web pages. One of the most fascinating features is this language is that, it can be used in standalone graphical applications and can be embedded into HTML as well. Since it runs on a web server – the PHP code being taken as an input and creating web pages as an output. So it is termed as a server side scripting language.

PHP version 5.2 has been introduced with a number of improvements, which includes a list of new features, bug fixes and also security improvements. A most important feature introduced in this release is the new memory manager. The improved and new memory manager for the Zend Engine has an improved performance level and a memory usage tracking system to a more accurate level. The Input filtering extension and JSON extension has been added and enabled by default in this release as an added feature. A few of the key features that has been upgraded in this series include:
- Upgraded bundle of SQLite and PCRE libraries.
- Upgraded OpenSSL, MYSQL and PostgreSQL client libraries for the Windows installations.

A number of security improvements and about 200 bug fixes that are introduced in PHP 5.2 have actually enhanced the performance level to a greater extent. Bugs like, overflow in str-repeat() and wordwrap() functions on 64-bit machines have been fixed in this release. Long path handling inside the tempnam() function and ini setting overload in the ini-restore() function now no longer exists. The improved safe-mode enforcement for error-log() function has actually added a level more in the security section of PHP 5.2. Apart from the changes in the bug fixation and security section, a number of new parameters, functions, methods, extensions, classes and INI configuration Directives have been introduced in PHP 5.2 which plays a major role in the enhancement.

Although, most of the improvements introduced in PHP 5.2 do not affect the existing code, but there are a few error messages and incompatibilities that should be taken into consideration So, it is always advisable to test the existing code before changing the PHP versions.