Rating: 
Summary: Not recommended for those without programming experience.
Review: Core PHP Programming is helpful and useful to those familiar with other programming languages such as C or Perl. However, if you are not well rooted in the jargon of computer programming, this book is not recommended. While he explains simple elements of PHP in the first chapters, the author uses jardon not previously explained or even defined.
Rating:
Summary: This book has some really good parts
Review: I think this book has some great examples, and I think this book has a lot of breadth instead of depth. That's not a bad thing. I found it's higher level descriptions to be useful in learning php3.
I especially liked the last few chapters on good coding practices.
If I could have the author redo anything, it would be to expand on debugging, and to give a more detailed description of phpinfo(). Also, I really need an example of how to access HTTP_POST_VARIABLES when I'm using PHP3 for forms.
One major problem is the typo in all of the examples for mysql:
It says:
$mysql_link = mysql_connect(...);
$mysql_select_db(...);
and it should be:
$mysql_link = mysql_connect(...);
mysql_select_db(...);
mysql_select_db is a function, not a variable.
Rating: 
Summary: Not recommended.
Review: The book is not well organized. Many topics are thrown in with not much order. Explanations and descriptions are not that clear. The exmaples could have been much better. I would rather wait for a better book on this subject (PHP). I will be returning this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best or worst I've seen.
Review: This is not an in-depth coverage of PHP, perhaps more of an 'introduction' to PHP.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent resource with great examples.
Review: Excellent Resource with great working examples. I look forward to more PHP references and working code. I appreciate the efforts of Mr. Atkinson.
Rating:
Summary: Doesn't deserve even one star.
Review: Chapters are out of order, functions are mentioned and used before they are explained. It is not written for the learning user. As I read through the book functions were mentioned in chapter 2 when they aren't even introduced or explained until Chapter 4. I'm sure the knowledge of the writer is vast, but the book is not well written.
Rating:
Summary: Poor
Review: It's not really a good reference. It lacks a lot of topics, and it doesn't follow a straight line. The online manual is better.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing new
Review: Most of the examples and tutorials can be found from many references on the web for free, including the code exchange and news forum. Otherwise, this book is for those who wants 'packaged' information and got no time to do own research.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing, not enough depth
Review: For all that the book is 500+ pages, it's not a very deep book. For example, the chapter that covers performance and debugging is especially light. It's better than the online documentation for PHP, but only marginally. Some features of PHP are covered lightly, if at all. The index is not very good. This really should have been a 275 page book. There just isn't enough material here to merit the amount of dead trees it took to print it...
Rating:
Summary: The best PHP book until O'Reilly makes one...
Review: Look at page 410 where he uses the sybase_dbuse function. A handy function, eh? It would be, if it existed... This is the kind of bug found throughout the book. Clear these up, add a better index and expand some amazingly short descriptions and you'll have a solid book. If you're on a budget, stick with the excellent documentation online at php.net, where it's often easier to find information.
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