A while back was writing some stuff on this blog about regular expressoins. While that remains unfinished, a mini regex example - nothing earth shattering but a useful technique if you hadn’t already seen it. Promtped by a real world example, one often-overlooked feature of most regular expressions engines is how subpatterns can useful to...

This should be required reading for anyone working on the server-side - What PHP Deployment Gets Right; this really is the final word on the subject - it really needs adding to the PHP manual, as there’s a significant gap when it comes to describing how PHP actually works, and why it’s designed to help [...]

This should be required reading for anyone working on the server-side - What PHP Deployment Gets Right; this really is the final word on the subject - it really needs adding to the PHP manual, as there’s a significant gap when it comes to describing how PHP actually works, and why it’s designed to help [...]

Happy 2008! At the risk of being a cad (or just plain annoying and silly)… Zed Shaw, (ex-?)author of Mongrel, makes this remark in his end of year epiphany Rails is a Ghetto; (15:11:12) DHH: before fastthread we had ~400 restarts/day (15:11:22) DHH: now we have perhaps 10 (15:11:29) Zed S.: oh nice (15:11:33) Zed S.: and that’s...

Happy 2008! At the risk of being a cad (or just plain annoying and silly)… Zed Shaw, (ex-?)author of Mongrel, makes this remark in his end of year epiphany Rails is a Ghetto; (15:11:12) DHH: before fastthread we had ~400 restarts/day (15:11:22) DHH: now we have perhaps 10 (15:11:29) Zed S.: oh nice (15:11:33) Zed S.: and that’s...

I mentioned briefly, in my last post, that Wez Furlong made a patch back in March, that allows a native syntax for creating anonymous functions. This could replace the heinous create_function. Since then, I brought up Wez’ original patch again on the php-internals lists. This has prompted some hefty debate over the last week. The main [...]

I mentioned briefly, in my last post, that Wez Furlong made a patch back in March, that allows a native syntax for creating anonymous functions. This could replace the heinous create_function. Since then, I brought up Wez’ original patch again on the php-internals lists. This has prompted some hefty debate over the last week. The main [...]

With the rise of Javascript, and languages like Python and Ruby, functional programming is becoming more mainstream. Even Java seems to be getting closures in the next version, so does this leave PHP lacking behind or is there an unrealised potential hidden within? Dynamic dispatch What exactly defines a functional programming language, is...

With the rise of Javascript, and languages like Python and Ruby, functional programming is becoming more mainstream. Even Java seems to be getting closures in the next version, so does this leave PHP lacking behind or is there an unrealised potential hidden within? Dynamic dispatch What exactly defines a functional programming language, is...

Harry mentioned the handy little phpm some three years ago. And Sean Coates was kind enough to point out how it could be replaced with a shell one-liner. Doesn’t that just make one love bash? One thing, I missed with either of the two, was the ability to see the entire manual entry. It’s quite [...]

Harry mentioned the handy little phpm some three years ago. And Sean Coates was kind enough to point out how it could be replaced with a shell one-liner. Doesn’t that just make one love bash? One thing, I missed with either of the two, was the ability to see the entire manual entry. It’s quite [...]

I’ve been using Emacs as my primary editor for a while now. A lot of people prefer IDE’s, but I’ve never been comfortable with them. I kind of like the ability to show a list of classes & functions in a file though. Emacs can use ctags to generate a list of tokens for a [...]

I’ve been using Emacs as my primary editor for a while now. A lot of people prefer IDE’s, but I’ve never been comfortable with them. I kind of like the ability to show a list of classes & functions in a file though. Emacs can use ctags to generate a list of tokens for a [...]

The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & hacks, 2nd Edition is out! This is a big deal for me because it’s my first book as a technical editor. It represents several months’ work and a considerable amount of coffee. I think it’s a great book with heaps of code you can rip out and [...]

The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & hacks, 2nd Edition is out! This is a big deal for me because it’s my first book as a technical editor. It represents several months’ work and a considerable amount of coffee. I think it’s a great book with heaps of code you can rip out and [...]