Rating: 
Summary: Almost useless
Review: This book will fit in your pocket. That's about the best thing that can be said for it. It lacks an index, and the long lists of functions are listed without any meaningful description, nor are the parameters to these functions described in any detail. To make matters worse, the layout and typography makes it hard to find what little information there is. Save your money and buy a more complete reference and hope somebody comes out with a PHP quick reference that's actually useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe?
Review: This book would be great, if it had an index. The book does have a TOC, but it doesn't help find specific commands or functions. This book is only good for a reference on PHP. They do explain a couple of things, but not enough to use this book specifically as a learning tool. If you are looking to learn PHP buy "PHP Fast and Easy Web Development. I bought it and it is a great book for someone that wants to learn all of PHP.
Rating:
Summary: Reference from the creator of PHP
Review: This pocket reference is written by the creator of PHP, which is special for this O'Reilly series. It covers PHP 3 (not 4). On some 30 pages it introduces one into the PHP3 language and afterwards up to page 114 it lists the PHP3 functions. Thats good so far. But there is no index or bibliography. It's probably the smalest set of statements, so that one may be able to use PHP.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty lame
Review: Well, for starters: there's no index. How did that slip through the cracks? Since the functions are grouped by type, you need to know what the function is before you can look up what it is, or just flip through 114 pages scanning for it, which leads to problem number 2: the typography is such that the function names blend right into the text.The function reference identifies what is returned by the functions by data type (e.g., integer), but not whether it's a pointer to an array or just a number, or what. The Leon Atkinson book, otherwise even lamer than this book, at least got that part right. Advice to O'Reilly: give up on the pretense of always having the "preeminent expert" write your books. Get professional technical writers, partner them with the big name "creators" of the technology, and the quality and timeliness of the books will improve. Thank god Larry Wall didn't write the Perl book. O'Reilly doesn't have the field all to itself anymore, so they shouldn't be resting on their laurels.
Rating:
Summary: You'll spend hours with this book
Review: You'll spend hours trying to find references because of how poorly it has been organized. No index; no rhyme or reason to the subject order; essentially a useless book. In adition there are but brief descriptions of each function -- what one could usually surmize from the general naming convention. Because of it's size, however, I would re-purchase a second edition, if the publisher would only add an index.
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