[slurgfest]

The PHP project has ensured that "3) Don't use PHP" is the lowest-cost option. These bugs are not trivial, and there are far too many of them.

It is important that people should be fully aware of the technical liability they are taking on when they adopt PHP for nontrivial projects.

It isn't reasonable to demand that other people fix the huge collection of weird bugs in your project. Particularly when they are not invested in PHP (any more). PHP's bug collection is a strong reason not to invest in PHP (any more). If it is important to you to encourage PHP adoption, then YOU fix the bugs.

I am not wasting my life working around this nonsense because there is no reason why I should have to. There are alternatives which already work correctly.

Don't trade off against the cost of rewriting.

Trade off against the cost of using any of the well-developed alternatives which do not have the same bugs, the same volume of bugs, or the same internal processes which generate and shelter bugs for years on end.