PHP 4.2.0 includes several improvements:
- External variables (from the environment, the HTTP request, cookies or the web server) are no longer registered as global variables
- Overhaul of the sockets extension
- Highly improved performance with file uploads
- The satellite and mailparse extensions were moved to PECL and are no longer bundled with the official PHP release
- The posix extension has been cleaned up
- iconv handling has been improved
- Output buffering support, which was introduced in PHP 4.1.0 has been stabilized
- Improved performance and stability of the domxml extension
- New multibyte regular expression support
- LOTS of fixes and new functions
PS: It seems that there will be a 4.2.1 release. So hold your downloads unless you are impatient! [PHP Everywhere]