Basically, the PEAR provided by xampp has not been updated to run under PHP 8.x. and faced multiple deprecated and removed features in PHP 8.0 that resulted in PHP fatal errors.

1) Access character problem
The first problem is that string access uses curly brackets {} The zero-based offset when accessing has been removed and only square brackets []## can be used #.

$arg{0}

$arg[0]

solution: Use regular expression
\{(\$[a-zA-Z0-9\ ]*)\} to search all files in xampp/php/pear folder and replace with [$1]
Important: Check every occurrence and do not change the regular expression in the script! ! !


2) Uncaught ArgumentCountError problem The second problem is that the php function
set_error_handler where is removed the last parameter in PHP 8.0.0. The callback function requires
five arguments, but it only gets four arguments, so the call fails with PHP Fatal error: Uncaught ArgumentCountError: Too Fewarguments to function error_handler( ) , 4 items passed, exactly 5 items were expected.

solution: Search for the
set_error_handler( call and find the referenced callback function error_handler and make the last argument optional. In my case it was in the script
xampp\php\pear\pearcmd.php and the function definition was on line 446:

function error_handler($errno, $errmsg, $file, $line, $vars)

function error_handler($errno, $errmsg, $file, $line, $vars = null)

Apache Friends Support Forum is back in September 2021.


3) Undefined function each() problem The third problem is that the PHP function
each() is removed, which throws PHP Fatal Error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function each().

solution Search for all occurrences of
every( (use spaces to eliminate function "foreach" in the result set) and check and update with function foreach and use the correct parameter file in each .\

while Syntax example

while (list($i, $arg) = each($args)) {

foreach ($args as $i => $arg) {

list Syntax example

list(,$first) = each($lines);

foreach($lines as $first){}

If - else statements, you can use emtpy($args) followed by foreach($args as $opt_arg){} Build variable $opt_arg.

If - else Syntax example

if (!strlen($opt_arg) && !(list(, $opt_arg) = each($args))) {

if (!strlen($opt_arg) && !empty($args)) {
       foreach($args as $opt_arg){}

C:\xampp\php>pear help version
PEAR Version: 1.10.1
PHP Version: 8.2.0
Zend Engine Version: 4.2.0
Running on: Windows NT D5KGFJF 10.0 build 19045 (Windows 10) AMD64