Mr. Atkinson is a nice guy... but this book was rushed to market, and will be qualitatively beneath the next PHP books. As a handy paper source, it is sufficient.
After flying through this book, I was comfortably writing 300 line PHP scripts to access Oracle databases and contextually format very complicated web pages. My general happiness with life right now is probably due more to PHP than to this book.
One example of this book's problems: function calls are sorted alphabetically. Thus, you'll get to "closedir" way before you get to "opendir" or "readdir". Also, the function titles go like "string urlencode(string url_text)" -- which means that you have to read the SECOND word of every heading to see the (alphabetical) function name and the FIRST word to see what the function returns. Function descriptions are generally sorted into "File", "Database", "RegExp" etc., which further frustrates any quick reference attempts.
The book is not in depth. If you're wondering whether you can regexp with a variable during a directory read, you're out of luck. I found myself wishing Larry Wall (of Perl) had written the book.
The thing is, I probably know more about PHP after one week exposure to PHP than the book does. A good reference book is supposed to constantly refresh and enlighten you. Lastly, keep your pen handy, because this early edition's code has some errors that you'll want to correct on the page. The CD-ROM also has those errors.
