Where can I find PHP manuals for previous versions?

Question

The excellent PHP Manual is often cited as one of the reasons for the success of PHP, but it covers the latest releases of the language.

This can be quite frustrating if you are trying to use features that are under active development, and only partially exist in older versions: for example working with PHP 5.2.* but trying to use the 5.3 documentation for DateTime (PHP 5 >= 5.2.0) but without the availability of DateTime::add (PHP 5 >= 5.3.0).

Are previous versions of documentation available (eg for PHP5.2.*)?

Answer 1

There is no previous documentation, they are all merged into a single entity. An attempt is made to keep version requirements in line within the documents, as you have seen based on your question text.

Answer 2

They're not available online, but you may be able to generate them yourself if you're sufficiently motivated.

http://doc.php.net/php/dochowto/

This guide covers how to get the documentation source and build it yourself. Try checking out an older revision and building that.