Paul Krill
Editor at Large

PHP floating point bug fixed

news
Jan 6, 20112 mins

Development team members put out upgraded PHP versions that fix floating point problem

Fixes for a floating point bug affecting PHP on 32-bit systems have been published, the PHP development team reported on Thursday.

Initially expected on Wednesday, the fixes slid until today, with PHP builders mired in packaging and releasing the updates. “The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17,” the team said in a bulletin. “This release resolves a critical issue, reported as PHP bug #53632, where conversions from string to double might cause the PHP interpreter to hang on systems using x87 FPU registers.

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“The problem is known to only affect x86 32-bit PHP processes, regardless of whether the system hosting PHP is 32-bit or 64-bit. You can test whether your system is affected by running this script from command line,” the team said.

The team “strongly advised” all users of PHP to update to these versions “immediately.” Updates are available at the PHP.net website.

The bug was reported earlier this week by Rick Regan in the Exploring Binary blog.

Zend Technologies, which sells PHP development tools, also sent a hotfix to mend the problem to Zend Server subscribers.

This article, “PHP floating point bug fixed,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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