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switching database extensions in PHP

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I must be the very last person on Earth to migrate a substantial PHP project from the antique mysql_ functions (which went out with MySQL 5.something) to mysqli_. But in case there's anyone left on the old system, here's how I converted the many, many scripts that make up my CMS and delivery system. The following commands on the Linux command line were all I needed.

tar -cf before_attempted_migration.tar *php
for b in *php
 do
 perl -p -i -e "s/mysql_/mysqli_/g;" $b
 done
for b in *php
 do
 perl -p -i -e "s/mysqli_query((.*), (.*))/mysqli_query(2, 1)/g;" $b
 done

The second command is required because in the transition, the bright minds who create the PHP language seem to have fixed a needle/haystack ordering issue. Or perhaps they made one.

Once your code checks out (the functionality is the same as before your migration) you can delete the .tar file.