I believe I fit the criteria of those to whom this book is suited. IE a procedural programmer looking to start OOP'ing up some of my work. This book seemed pretty good, so, like you guys - I bought it.

However, 11 pages in I was greeted by 'exceptions'. Now, correct me if I'm wrong but exceptions kinda go hand in hand with oop, don't they? "Excellent," I thought - exceptions! I'll just flick to the index and read up a bit on exceptions. WASTE OF TIME - they're not covered.

Not a problem as it seemed that understanding exceptions wasn't vital in understanding the code I was looking at (code beginning P13).

I read on, got to page 17 (and as I now know through a bit of Googleling) came up against 'type hints'. Did I have a clue what was going on? Were they introduced pre-code or explained post-code? After discovering what exactly I was looking at and finding out what they're called I looked in the index for them.. were they listed?

No. No. No.

(( The code was 'public function hunt(Prey $objPrey) {' ))

Already this book is proving hard work and I severely doubt it will be a self-contained reference. Can someone who's read this book through please tell me if this kind of thing is a common occurence while reading through Professional PHP 5 please? I'm sure that there's plenty of FANTASTIC material in here but is reading cover to cover really the best way to get at it?

As I posted somewhere else in this forum, I am reading this book as an overview of the subjects related to OO programming. I think you should scan it more than read it and do some research on topics that interest you.

I know it doesn't linder the pain of having paid US$ 40 for something with so many mistakes, but that's one way to try and make the best use of it.