PHP 5.3 breakage

I switched my web sites over to PHP 5.3 and I’m really pretty happy. The only production site I have that broke was one based on the symfony framework, and that was because a useless plugin that I installed but never removed had a constant called ‘namespace’.

 I've got another problem in my deeper back end which is that they took the extension for reading dbase files away,  and I need that extension to read all of the ARC/GIS shape files I've got laying around.

 At the moment I'm probably going to build a PHP 5.2 command line executable and write a special script that extracts shapes and exports them in a newer format like WKT or GML (that's really what I'm doing now) but I'm wondering if there's a 'pure PHP' way to read dbase files or if it's worth lobbying the PHP developers to get the extension back.

Try searhcing phpclasses.org if you want a php code implementation.

The extension is not gone, just moved to PECL.

So once again the PHP team has put a developer in a “Pickle” (get it)?

No? :goof:

Off Topic:

PECL can be pronounced aloud as “pickle” - it’s a pun.