PHP 5.3 : Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated

[devil1591]

when upgrading PHP to PHP 5.3, you have errors of this type.
set_magic_quotes_runtime( 0 ); is also deprecated

[nacin]

E_DEPRECATED errors are suppressed in WordPress, so you should never see these.

We need to keep the code that is deprecated in 5.3 to be compatible with PHP 4.

[scribu]

Also see #10533

[devil1591]

These errors happen because some plugins call directly wp-config.php instead of calling wp-load.php

[j_schumann]

Since WP 3.2 PHP4 support is retired and PHP5.2+ required so it would be a good time now with 3.3 coming to fix those errors.
Changing the error_reporting value or deactivating Plugins are only cosmetic solutions, the code still is deprecated.

There are some core files throwing E_DEPRECATED, mostly from "Assigning the return value of new by reference", other occurences of deprecated code like the aforementioned set_magic_quotes_runtime() have already been fixed in trunk.

Some of the files holding deprecated code include:
/wp-includes/widgets.php:324
/wp-includes/class-wp.php:570
/wp-includes/taxonomy.php:1161
/wp-includes/theme.php:1721
/wp-includes/l10n.php:486
/wp-includes/query.php:92
/wp-includes/class-phpmailer.php - some occurences
/wp-includes/class-simplepie.php - many occurences

Most of these can be fixed by simply removing the ampersand in front of the new operator or function definiton which does not change the functionality for PHP5+

[j_schumann]

fix new by reference in class-simplepie.php

[j_schumann]

replace set_magic_quotes_runtime in class-phpmailer.php

[j_schumann]

replace set_magic_quotes_runtime in class-pclzip.php, remove check for deprecated functions

[j_schumann]

fix new by reference in Text/Diff

[j_schumann]

All other occurences of "set_magic_quotes_runtime", "&new" and "& new" seem to be fixed in trunk already.

[scribu]

Those are third-party libraries. We should try to update them to newer versions, instead of patching them directly.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#12367