Does anyone else out there think that this book is the worst Wrox title ever released? This book falls into the category "could have been". Half of the code does not work and then there is the point that PHP 6 is not even available. I even went as far to share my opinions on this book with Wrox. Two months later and still no response.

If I knew how to write the code I would not have bought this book. Now I get to type in the code that is in the book and then search through the Internet to figure out how to implement.

Disappointed Customer

I haven't seen this particular title, but I have heard people with complaints about PHP6. The PHP folks seem to be especially aware that their technology is falling behind the times, and sent out beta versions to a lot of reviewers throughout the industry. They've been able to generate significant excitement about the new things it "will" do.

Unfortunately as you point out, a number of the cool things (like full Unicode support) is unfinished and doesn't work yet. I think the problem is that PHP6 is so revolutionary that people became enamored with the possibilities and wrote books earlier than you typically would (in the middle of the beta phase), and it's such a massive rewrite (for Unicode support, they're literally having to rewrite every PHP function) that it's taking them MUCH longer to get it finished than is normal. It's an unfortunate situation, but when it's finished, hopefully, we'll be able to assess the effectiveness of this title better.

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Chroniclemaster1, Founder of www.EarthChronicle.com
A Growing History of our Planet, by our Planet, for our Planet.

I agree that this book has a tremendous amount of errors (the most I have ever seen in any textbook), which is why I would never recommend it to anyone but the most intrepid and determined programmers. I don't know whether the fault lies with the authors or the editors. I see all these nice little screenshots showing you what the results should be when you execute the code, which leads me to believe that, at some point, someone actually had working code written for all of these pages (otherwise where did the screenshots come from?). Did the authors somehow pass on screwed up code to the editors, or did the code get screwed up by the editors during the publication process, or was it possibly a little of both? Who knows? I know that if I were one of the authors of this book, I would have double checked every single line of code to make sure it worked before publishing it in a book with my name on it.
Now that I've vented all of my frustrations with this book, its authors, and its editors, let me pass on some words of wisdom. Get used to it and learn to live with it. Any experienced programmer will tell you that you are going to end up spending some of your time in the field fixing other people's screwed up code. And you will also end up fixing some of your own screwed up code and other people will end up fixing some of your screwed up code. This is a fact of life as a programmer and this is how we learn to be better at our jobs. I wish I could say that I write perfect code every time, but I know that I make mistakes and I don't know anyone who doesn't make a mistake every now and then.
And yes, I agree with you that this book has way too many errors in it.