Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1998 13:06:50 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.on.ca>
To: new-httpd@apache.org
Subject: PHP 3.0 Release Announcement
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PHP 3.0 is finally here!  After 10 months of development PHP Version 3.0
is ready for production environments.  Coupled with the release of the
final version of Apache-1.3.0 today, the combination provides an
unbeatable web hosting platform suitable for both small and large web
sites.

PHP 3.0 is the latest evolution of the PHP/FI 2.0 language and it offers
some dramatic enhancements.  It is more than twice as fast, it uses less
memory, it has a more consistent language implementation and a much wider
set of expressions and language features than PHP/FI 2.0.  An included
conversion program will help you migrate your PHP2 scripts to PHP3.

There are too many changes and enhancements to list each one here, but
some of the key points are:

 * Persistent database connections for selected databases
 * New language constructs such as for loops and multi-dimensional arrays
 * A well-defined C API which lets you extend PHP yourself
 * Dynamically loadable modules
 * Run-time configuration of most PHP options

For a more detailed description of the differences between PHP2 and PHP3,
see http://www.php.net/changes.php3

The people behind PHP3 are:

Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans who speerheaded the new and improved parser
which is the heart and soul of PHP.  Zeev also rewrote many of the
database modules and implemented persistent connections.

Stig Bakken who along with writing the Oracle support and many other
important PHP3 features has worked tirelessly on the SGML framework for
the online manual which you can see at http://www.php.net/manual/.

Shane Caraveo is the Windows developer in the group.  He performs magic
with Unix-specific code and somehow makes it work well on Windows.  He is
currently locked away in a small room making PHP multithread safe on
Windows with the goal being to get the Windows-based PHP ISAPI parser
running smoothly.

Jim Winstead who helped streamline the URL grokking code which allows you
to open up http and ftp url's directly from various PHP commands.  Jim
also fixed some very complex regular expression code, added dBase support
along with various other important bits and pieces.

Rasmus Lerdorf who has been developing bits and pieces of PHP for years.

Although the above 6 people are the core contributors to the project,
countless others have contributed code, bug fixes and suggestions.  The
PHP project would have been completely impossible without these people.
For a more detailed list of who has contributed to this projects have a
look at http://www.php.net/credits.php3

PHP can be downloaded in both source and binary form from
http://www.php.net It is an Open Source project and can be used free of
charge for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.  See the license
included with the PHP distribution for full details.

-The PHP Development Team