* Doesn't set the feed links so it's undiscoverable
* Contents are entirely inconsistent with existing recent changes and history feeds
* Adds unnecessary new messages
The listed problem is that the backlink to the target page on Special:Recentchangeslinked shows blue for nonexistent pages, but this patch made it redirect to the nonexistent page, where I'd expect to just change the link coloring. The redirect behavior also makes it tough to work with the category mode for cats where the page hasn't been filled out yet.
* Convert "$dbw =& wfGetDB( DB_MASTER );" --> "$dbw = wfGetDB( DB_MASTER );"
* convert "$skin =& $wgUser->getSkin();" --> "$skin = $wgUser->getSkin();"
For the time being have not changed the function definitions of wfGetDB() or User::getSkin() [i.e. they are still both return-by-ref], so as to ensure the interface does not change for extensions [some of which may still be trying to run on PHP4 environments]. However presumably at some point this can be changed too.
Also includes tiny tweak to newlines in parserTests - will show 1 rather than 2 newlines between the "Reading tests from" strings when in quiet mode.
Three reasons for this:
1) It's better for analysis tools [which want explicit variable declaration]
2) It's easier for a human to read, as it's completely explicit where the variables came from [which is something you don't get with extract() ]
3) It makes it easier to find everywhere where a variable is used with search/grep [which you can't currently do with $tbl_page variables from things like: "extract($db->tableNames( 'page', 'revision'), EXTR_PREFIX_ALL, 'tbl');"].
Otherwise, from a functionality/efficiency perspective the two forms should be identical.
By doing this have been able run static analysis over the usages of these variables, thus eliminating 5 unneeded table names from calls, plus removing 3 unused calls entirely, and it just feels subjectively slightly nicer to me.
* removing some unused global declarations.
* removing or commenting out or adding comments for unused local vars.
* Adding one or two local var declarations.
* Declaring $matches array passed to preg_match() / preg_match_all() as array() before using [not required, just have a slight preference for the explicitness].
* remove one or two pass-by-reference function declarations where the value is not modified.
* Adding some braces to if-else blocks.
* In Parser.php, stripstrate is now an object rather than an array as per r17820, so we no longer need ask for a reference to it (as in "$x =& $this->mStripState;"), and in fact it's probably just simpler to get rid of $x altogether.
* Moving some preg regexes from "" quoting to '' quoting to stop static analyzer whinging about bad escape sequences.
... up to "LinksUpdate.php" in the includes/ directory.
* fix page history with table prefix
* fix paging on history
* switch 'earliest' and 'latest' link order to fix 'prev' and 'next'
* use null where appropriate
* switch some messages to plaintext or wikitext
