Best place for PHP help?

Factual Questions
1

I need some PHP help and wonder what are good places to get help.

Just in case a PHP wizard is reading this, my web host is using version 4.3.11 on Linux and I use a call that looks like this:

$caption = @file_get_contents ($captionFile);

I just installed version 4.2.3 locally on my XP machine with Apache. When my local version encounters this code, it just quits. If I try removing the “@” I get an error that the function is not found. (I can’t remember why I needed the “@” in the first place.)

Do I have a version issue, or some kind of configuration issue?

And where is the best place to ask this question?

2

I could be wrong, but a quick Googling suggests that the file_get_contents() function is supported in PHP 4.3.0 and higher. Thus, you should upgrade your local version.

This site suggests a 4.2.x workaround (here).

3

The @ says if you encounter an error, don’t care. So it’s encountering an error and die’ing.

4

Thanks, that must be the problem. I tried using phpdev which hasn’t published a later version AFAIK. So I’ll be looking at other LAMPs. Thanks!