PEAR

How useful is this book if one does not use PEAR?

I spent almost three days figuring it out what should I suggest you if you do not use PEAR.

The author relies too much on PEAR packages, meaning that around 90% of complex solutions uses at least one PEAR package. The others solutions are known ones and you can probably find them on PHP manual.
There are just a few examples (like Tag Could in chapter 7) that exposes both solutions, one using pure PHP and the other using PEAR HTML_TagCloud.

So, my short version to your question is: If you do not like/use PEAR, I don't recommend.

Thank you, Guilherme.

It's not that I don't like PEAR, but I don't use it. Perhaps I should check it out and see how useful it is for my applications.

Gerry