Dotdeb says PHP 5.3.18 is the latest

Question

I'm using Debian 6 . Now I don't understand why it says PHP 5.3.18 is the latest when 5.3.2 has been around for 2 years? I need at least PHP 5.3.2 for my symfony project. Thanks.

Answer 1

PHP uses the dotted integer convention for versions (i.e. the version number should be considered a sequence of integers, not a floating point number). 5.3.10 was the release after 5.3.9. That means 5.3.18 is sixteen releases after 5.3.2.

Note that this is the standard way of interpreting a version number with more than one dot in it. Single-dotted version numbers are less consistent. Some projects consider them a floating point number, and some treat them as a pair of integers.

Answer 2

5.3.18 is more recent than 5.3.2.

As a sidenote, you should probably go straight to PHP 5.4 if you don't have any hard dependencies on 5.3.* The short array syntax is a good enough reason for me.