Hi :-)

on
http://www.smarty.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18429

I finally found out the reason about Smarty not working on my server.
It is NOT related to the PHP version but to a PHP.INI setting: zend.ze1_compatibility_mode

My production server was set to zend.ze1_compatibility_mode=On which DISABLE passing objects by reference.

We switched it to Off and now it works as expected.

So Smarty should work with any version of PHP (not from 5.2) according that setting is set to OFF. You may write this somewhere in the documentation though, as it took me one week to sort this out!

on free

zend.ze1_compatibility_mode    Off    Off

it should be necessary to test

Just checked the basic demo provided with Smarty3 and that works with only "php 1", because "zend.ze1_compatibility_mode    Off    Off" is set on Free