The book is still under copyright by McGraw-Hill. Downloading a free PDF from a random torrent site or "free PDF" repository is piracy. While individual users rarely get sued, you are stealing from the publisher and the estate of the author.
This is not a traditional reference; it is a guide to how PHP is written today (Composer, PSR standards, middleware). It is the exact opposite of a 2006 textbook.
First, let’s give credit where it is due. Steven Holzner was a prolific author of programming books (over 100 titles). His Complete Reference series was famous for one thing: Density.
Unlike “beginner” books that take 300 pages to explain a loop, Holzner’s PHP reference was packed. It assumed you had some coding background but needed the syntax, functions, and best practices in one volume.
Why do developers still search for it?
However, the book was published around 2006-2007 targeting PHP 4 and early PHP 5. In the programming world, that is a geological era ago.
