I do a decent amount of coding in PHP these days, and was wondering if any of the other web wonks around here could help me out. I'd like to purchase a book to just use as a reference. I know O'Reilly usually makes great books, especially on OSS (I have the perl camel book and the mysql book).

Anyhoo, do you guys have any suggestions for a great reference book on PHP?

http://www.php.net/manual/en/

It's all I have ever used, and probably ever will. Books are nice for reference, but go out of date too quickly. I print out anything I might need for a short time, or simply put my laptop next to the computer as a sort of second monitor.

Ditto. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to try and convince other people that that is actually the BEST way to go. People always bug me with their "There HAS to be a good book on the subject" lines, but really, there isn't. When it comes down to it, the best thing is to have the manual for reference. All the books want to force a coding style, and not only that, they have things wrong a lot of the time. :P

Right...I use the online manual prolifically. It is a work of art. One of the most truly useful online resources I've come across (aside from the empeg faq, of course). I was just wondering if there was a PHP equivalent to the perl camel book....

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I keep the O'Reilly PHP pocket reference book handy. There's the full blown version as well.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progphp/

As a relative php newbie, i especially like the comments left by more experienced programmers on most functions.