I'm using PHP 4.4.2 and MySQL 5.0.18. This book uses an older version of MySQL, which led to some difficulty connecting to MySQL in the create a movie database "Try It Out" section on page 96.

When using:
$connect = mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "mysqlpass")
I kept getting an error message that said: "Client does not support authentication protocol".

I went to the MySQL site and found that MySQL 5 uses an authentication protocol based on a password hashing algorithm that is incompatible with that used by older clients (whatever that means!). They provide instructions on how you can make a newer MySQL client revert to the old password authentication, thus allowing the connection. This seems to have worked for me and I wanted to post this on the P2P site in case anyone else ran into this problem.

This link brings to you to a page that provides instructions on how to fix this issue:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/old-client.html

Of course, the best solution would probably be to just upgrade to PHP5, but I bought this book before the newer PHP5 edition came out.