PHP book review

I recently completed a PHP refresher course titled PHP Essentials. The instructor, editor of php|architect, was looking for someone to run through the course to work out any kinks, and I was looking for a PHP refresher. While taking the class via Skype over the course of several months (it is hard to align the schedules of two busy women!), I decided that having a book to work through at the same time would complement the course and provide another way of looking at the same material. The first book available through interlibrary loan was PHP 5 / MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner, so I checked that out. I worked through the first few chapters, but I ended up returning it unfinished. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the title. It presented the information in a way that didn’t seem to build logically. For instance, it presented the $_POST concept before discussing arrays. It also advised the use of the print function instead of echo or print_r. I seldom run into the use of print in PHP projects, so I found it odd that echo and print_r were not even mentioned. It’s back to the library and the next book in the queue for me.