The naming of functions seem to cause much hatred. Why is it called str_shuffle(), str_repeat() and str_replace(), but strlen(), strpos() and strrev()?

The order of parameters also seem to piss people off, for instance array_filter ( array $input [, callback $callback ] ) and then we look at array_map ( callback $callback , array $arr1 [, array $... ] ). Doesn’t make sense.

The need to use cURL if you need to work with cookies.

The use if php.ini where you can set magic_quotes, register_globals and safe mode on / off does not make the code very portable. Say you write a program with safe mode = on in the back of your head and then the program are used on another server with safe mode off…

And then we have PEAR as quoted on a dude at reddit.com “Oh, and then there is PEAR. Hey, I’d like to install 5,000 buggy libraries on my website.”

And there is the dollar sign ($) which seems like waste of space, the lack of the opportunity to use threads and it’s easy to write bad and sloppy code, while other languages forces the user to write better code.

But the main reason I personally think is that there are some many people learning PHP as their first language (including myself) and then the language is associated with newbies.

Golfing in Perl is much more efficient then with PHP, you can tweak and hack Perl indefinitely. But I’m going to show some tips and tricks of how to make PHP code as little as possible.

Of course, use short one char variable names, remove useless whitespace (spaces, newlines, tabs etc). Use echo instead of print. Don’t write the same code twice and in general think outside the box.

Use short php tag you don’t need to close the php tag. So you can do this without any problem:

<?
print "hello world";

and if possible:

<?="hello world";

You don’t need to add quotes on single word strings. It will give a notice, but most golf competitions will ignore notices:

$foo = bar;

Multi assign variables:

$a=$b=0;

Use actual newline instead of “\n”. You will save a whole byte.

print "hello world
";

Don’t use braces {} where you don’t need to. And in some cases add as much as possible inside it.

for($a='a',$b='b',$i=0;$i<10;$i++,$a=$b)echo$i;

Use short ifs instead of the ordinary if operator:

$a = $x == 1? 'a' : 'b';

In the above example you can make it even smaller if you drop the checking of $x being 1, by just checking if its true:

$a = $x? 'a' : 'b';

You can do that in a for-loop also:

for($i = 10; $i; $i--);

You can assign multiple variables and print them out in one statement:

echo $a = "hello", $b = "world";

You can also use short ifs inside echo and decrease $i while you check if its true. This example will print “foo” as long as $i is over 0:

for($a=foo,$i=99;$i;)echo--$i?$a:'';

You can use strings to simulate arrays:

$s = "hello";
echo $s[0], $s[1], $s[2], $s[3], $s[4];

Remove the last “invisible” newline at the bottom of your file. Lets say we have this file:

$a=0;

You count 5 bytes, right? But the filesize says 6 bytes.
Open a hex editor and remove it manually or run this command from a shell:

perl -pi -e 's/\n*$//' file.php

I will continue to update this post as when more tricks comes to my mind…

Here are some sites where you can golf around:
Perl Golf
C Golf
Code Golf (Ruby, PHP, Perl, Python)
PHP Golf (Under contruction by me)

It’s easy to use and is much more robust against SQL-injections. This is because you explicit define what is a value.

Here are some examples of how to use PDO.

Initalize the PDO object.

try {
    $pdo = new PDO(
        "mysql:dbname=db;host=localhost", 'user', 'pass',
        array(
            PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES => true,
            PDO::FETCH_ASSOC => true,
            PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
        )
    );
}
catch (PDOException $e) {
    die ($e->getMessage());
}

PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES => true
PDO emulates prepared statements instead of sending them to the sql driver. With the MySQL driver, this will increase speed.

PDO::FETCH_ASSOC => true
Fetching rows from a query will only return a set of associative keys. By default you get a set of numerical keys too, which are rarely used. If you fetch ‘SELECT firstname, middlename, surname’ in $row, you will get $row['firstname'], $row[0], $row['middlename'], $row[1],
$row['surname'] and $row[2]. PDO::FETCH_ASSOC will not return the numerical keys.

PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
Makes an exception on errors, which makes it nice and easy to handle errors.

Here’s an example of how to make a standard query with parameters.
You don’t need to escape the inputs with mysql_real_escape_string(), because PDO knows what is parameters and not.
(This is just and example, you don’t want the users password as plain text in the database.)

$sql = "SELECT id FROM users
          WHERE username = :user AND password = :pass";
$stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);
$stmt->bindParam(':user', $_POST['username']);
$stmt->bindParam(':pass', $_POST['password']);
$stmt->execute();
$result = $stmt->fetch();
print $result['id'];

When calling a static call without paramters you could just do:

$sql = 'SELECT username FROM users ORDER BY id DESC';
foreach ($pdo->query($sql) as $row) {
    print $row['username'];
}

When dealing with classes. Pass the PDO-object with the constructor and make it protected.

class Foo {
    protected $pdo;
    function __contruct($pdo) {
        $this->pdo = $pdo;
    }
}

When you need to use SQL’s “LIMIT” you need to explicit tell PDO that it is in fact integers we are inserting.

$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT foo FROM bar LIMIT :offset, :hits");
$stmt->bindValue(':offset', (int) $offset, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->bindValue(':hits', (int) $hits, PDO::PARAM_INT);

This is explained more in detail here:
http://e-mats.org/2009/02/pdo-and-pdoparam_int/

Now go and explore PDO if you havn’t already done so!

Open /etc/apt/sources.list:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add these lines at the bottom:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ubuntu lucid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ubuntu lucid main

Update and upgrade:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If you don’t use Lucid (Ubuntu 10.04) just change “lucid” to what ever you use, for example ‘karmic’.

Enjoy :)

<?php

function randStr($length, $str='') {
	$array = array_merge(range('a', 'z'), range('A', 'Z'), range(0, 9));
    for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
        $str .= $array[rand(0, (count($array) - 1))];
    }
    return $str;
}

?>

It used the QNetworkAccessManager class instead of the deprecated QHttp.

#include <QtCore>
#include <QNetworkAccessManager>
#include <QNetworkRequest>
#include <QNetworkReply>

void main(int argc, char ** argv)
{
    QString unescaped = "<My status update!>";
    QString data = "status=" + QUrl::toPercentEncoding(unescaped.toLatin1());
    QString auth = "<Username>" + ":" + "<Password>";
    QString encryptedAuth = auth.toAscii().toBase64();
    QNetworkAccessManager* manager = new QNetworkAccessManager(this);
    QNetworkRequest request;
    QNetworkReply *reply;
    request.setUrl(QUrl("http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"));
    request.setRawHeader(QByteArray("Host"), "twitter.com");
    request.setRawHeader(QByteArray("Content-Type"), "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
    request.setRawHeader(QByteArray("User-Agent"), "Mozilla");
    request.setRawHeader(QByteArray("Authorization"), "Basic " + encryptedAuth.toAscii());
    QByteArray postData(data.toLatin1(), data.length());
    reply = manager->post(request, postData);
}

I guess this is to show the world the power of HTML5 and that the developement are highly in progress :)

Hit insert coin, and you will get Ms. Pac-man which you control with the asdf buttons :)

Remove files not needed

sudo apt-get autoremove

Remove all stored archives in the cache

Basically it clears up the ‘/var/cache/apt/archives/’ and ‘/var/cache/apt/archives/partial’ folders

sudo apt-get clean

Remove package files that can no longer be downloaded

sudo apt-get autoclean

Remove locale data

This will remove unneeded locale files and localized man pages.

sudo apt-get install localepurge

Run it:

localepurge

A window will pop up. There choose your language. I use English, therefor I chose “en”.
Ignore the capitalized ones.

Remove orphaned packages

It shows you which packages that have no other packages depending on them.

sudo apt-get install deborphan

Run it:

sudo deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove --purge

Cleaning up log files

sudo find /var/log -type f -exec rm {} \;

Cleaning up doc files (use only when desperate use of space)

sudo rm -rf /usr/share/doc/*

Remove Linux kernels not in use

Check what kernel you are using:

uname -r

Goto System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager

Search for “Linux” and mark all Linux header/kernel files which you are not currently using for complete removal. Then hit ‘apply’.

I have also a 150GB drive which I have my home folder located in, so I created a folder there to take the heavy upgrading.

sudo su
cd /var/cache/apt
mv archives archives-original
mkdir -p archives/partial
mkdir -p /home/<username>/temp/archives
ln -s /home/<username>/temp archives
upgrade-manager

Restore to default:

rm archives
mv archives-original archives
rm -r /home/<username>/temp

Source:
http://www.webupd8.org/2009/11/how-to-upgrade-to-ubuntu-1004-lucid.html