PHP 3.0 is rewritten from the ground up. It has a proper parser that is much more robust and consistent than 2.0's. 3.0 is also significantly faster, and uses less memory. However, some of these improvements have not been possible without compatibility changes, both in syntax and functionality.
In addition, PHP's developers have tried to clean up both PHP's syntax and semantics in version 3.0, and this has also caused some incompatibilities. In the long run, we believe that these changes are for the better.
This chapter will try to guide you through the incompatibilities you might run into when going from PHP/FI 2.0 to PHP 3.0 and help you resolve them. New features are not mentioned here unless necessary.
A conversion program that can automatically convert your old PHP/FI 2.0 scripts exists. It can be found in the convertor subdirectory of the PHP 3.0 distribution. This program only catches the syntax changes though, so you should read this chapter carefully anyway.