PHP Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition by Rasmus Lerdorf.
SECTIONS
This book could easily be divided into two sections: a 33-page, general explanation of PHP and a 99-page listing of select, ready-made functions. Given the nature and scope of PHP, this first part might seem a little short, but actually it is just the right length for its purpose--which is to provide an overview, not teach PHP (there are a great many other books for that). If either of these sections could be described as too short, it would be the second one, which only describes about half of the roughly 2,800 functions that are built into PHP4. Again, this is not a deficit of the book’s coverage so much as it is a testament to the author’s discipline. Lerdorf could have included all the functions, but there is no way the resulting book could remain in the Pocket Guide category. Instead, he presents those that he thinks will be most useful, and he succeeds brilliantly. As the inventor of PHP, Lerdorf’s first-hand experience with the langauge provides him with a clarity that other authors simply cannot match.
RECOMMENDATIONS/OBSERVATIONS
Although the order of the functions described is relatively easy to understand, this book would benefit from an index. Sure, you could easily flip to the end of the book to look for information about functions that handle ZIP files ("z" entries being near the end, of course), but is that the only place you will find ZIP-related information? As the book is currently organized, there is no way to tell, aside from scanning the other 1,394 functions that are described in the Function Reference section. Array-related functions make an even better example, because although you can reasonably expect the ZIP-related functions to be clustered together, array-related functions appear in many locations throughout the text. An index would be helpful in corralling them into one place.
CONCLUSION
One of the many blessings of PHP is that the online documentation is so abundant and so rich. This book does not attempt to substitute for the online material, but rather to supplement it. I find myself reaching for it a lot to find out if a function I’ve just thought of already exists. As a pocket-sized reference, it is also extremely useful to carry around when I know I won’t be able to access the online documentation (such as during meetings or while commuting to or from work).
There’s a lot of really useful information in this book. All you have to do is look.
