php.ini hacks: –with-config-file-scan-dir and ini variable expansion

I whipped up a quick 3-minute presentation entitled php.ini hacks for today’s PHP Lightning Talks session at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. It demonstrates two features:

1. The --with-config-file-scan-dir option to ./configure
2. ini variable expansion (“open_basedir = ${open_basedir}:/tmp“)

Why? Because George and Laura asked me to, and this is all I could think of with 20 minutes notice. And because the ini variable expansion feature isn’t documented anywhere on the php.net website except for a passing reference in the PHP 5 ChangeLog:

Added possibility to access INI variables from within .ini file. (Andrei)

Tomorrow I’ll be giving a talk entitled Hacking Apache HTTP Server at Yahoo! It’s a repeat performance of the well-attended presentation I gave at ApacheCon 2005.