PHP MSQL pconnect

As I look at upgrading my site I noticed the use of pconnect:

$this->link = @mysql_pconnect($full_host, $this->user, $this->password);

I had changed this to using connect instead.  Isn't the use of pconnect the leading cause of "My SQL server went away" on shared hosts?  I remember facing that back on my crappy VPS and it was because of too many connections to the sql server.

It can.

Not that it will matter for future versions of dolphin anyway. At some point boonex will need to remove the use of both mysql_pconnect and mysql_connect when php 5.5 becomes the norm. Those functions are being depreciated in php 5.5 and will be completely removed in future versions of php.

I already wrote to Alex about this a couple of months ago and they are aware of it....