Acknowledgements

This book would not exist without the assistance of many, many, many people. They have my sincere gratitude and thanks.

My largest debt belongs to the entire PHP community. Upgrading to PHP 5 could not exist without your efforts. I want to specifically thank these people for their special assistance, whether they knew they were giving it or not: Marcus Boerger, Zak Greant, Andi Gutmans, Sterling Hughes, Derick Rethans, Rob Richards, Georg Richter, George Schlossnagle, Christian Stocker, and Hans Zaunere.

Thanks also to the members of NYPHP (http://nyphp.org/) for sharing problems, ideas, and solutions. I'm lucky to have the world's best PHP user group in my hometown.

Portions of Chapter 7 were inspired in part by Gunjan Doshi's Best Practices for Exception Handling article on ONJava.com (http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/11/19/exceptions.html). I offer him my thanks.

Bret Martin and Rik Faith provided hosting. Because of them, the technical review process was smooth and easy.

Two people diligently reviewed Upgrading to PHP 5 . Their comments and suggestions immensely improved all aspects of the book. Chris Shiflett and David Sklar are the two best technical reviewers an author could have. I am proud to call them my friends .

I want to thank all the associates of O'Reilly Media, Inc. for their help. I've met many O'Reilly employees over the years , and there's not a bozo in the bunch.

These people, both directly and indirectly, contributed to the words, images, and pages you hold in your hands:

• Genevieve d'Entremont prepared this book for production and repaired my prose .

• chromatic published my PHP articles on ONLamp.com.

• A cornered Andy Oram and Bruce Epstein graciously provided editorial guidance and support one late night at FOO Camp.

• Rob Romano transformed my crayon sketches into works of art.

• Betsy Waliszewski got the word out early and often.

However, two people contributed more messages to my inbox than the others combined: Tatiana Diaz and Nat Torkington.

I have no idea how Tatiana Diaz put up with my all-too-often claims of "Oh sure, I can make that deadline," without reaching through the Internet and strangling me. Without her gentle prodding, Upgrading to PHP 5 wouldn't be available until PHP 6.

Nat Torkington is a great editor. He gave me a push when I got stuck and helped me reframe chapters when they became misaligned . He even lets me make Perl 6 jokes at his expense. I pay him the greatest compliment I can: this book would be far less helpful without him.

Thanks to my family and friends for their support and encouragement.

Extra special thanks go to Elizabeth Hondl, my beautiful princess and talking frog.