In the latest PHP Weekly Summary from Zend, several major issues are discussed including: removing the $ from the PHP variables, the addition of "custom session" functionality, and a little something to catch errors on includes/requires.

The proposition to remove the $, as you can imagine, has stirred up quite a bit of discussion, and people have commented that "it's just easier" and it helps with performance. Sterling Hughes then swoops in to lay this to rest, stating that compiler caches fixes all of these issues.

The problem with "custom session" handlers is that, when it comes back to it, you almost have to recreate every session function out there to even be able to use them. As of yet, there have been no comments.

And, finally, catching errors on requires/includes seems like a simple thing, but it's turning out to be quite the handful. Attempts are being made and patches are going to be tried and applied to PHP 4 and 5.

There's much more happening this week, so head on over and check it out...