php 5.3, ticks, pcntl_signal, pcntl_signal_dispatch

I'm trying to track down a problem with a script that works on php 5.2 but behaves strangely on php 5.3 (there are lots of differences between the environments, and I suspect php version will actually turn out to be completely unrelated). php 5.3 introduced pcntl_signal_dispatch() which processes outstanding signals and I've been investigating if that could somehow explain the behaviour differences I see.

The confusing part is that I've seen people saying that the old way of "declare(ticks=1)" is now deprecated in 5.3, and you must use pcntl_signal_dispatch(). This seemed very silly as you'd have to litter your code with calls to pcntl_signal_dispatch(), as well as have very different code for php 5.2 and 5.3.

If you're confused, like I was, here is what you need to know:
1. declare(ticks=1) still works: no deprecated message (with E_ALL|E_STRICT error reporting);

2. My script, using ticks, behaves identically under 5.2 and 5.3 when I send it a ctrl-C or a kill signal;

3. The docs don't mention it being deprecated; I realized everywhere saying this was user-contributed comments or blogs!

There is a performance aspect with using declare(ticks=1). I believe it is minor, but I think pcntl_signal_dispatch() has been introduced so you can use it instead of ticks if you want to take fine-control over when signals get considered.