Most PHP3 scripts fail miserably under PHP4? I think not. This is PHP's site for PHP4,
http://www.php.net/version4/. Notice the line that says read the "VERY" few incompatiblities. This is the URL for the page listing the incompatiblities in running PHP3 scripts on PHP4.
http://www.php.net/version4/incompatibilities.php. There are more imcompatiblities between running a PHP4 script on PHP3.
And to further support this point is the fact that I've migrated 3 dedicated servers to PHP4 from PHP3. One was my own site which required no changes and the other two were intranat servers at Ford and on only one of those machines I needed to update like 2 scripts and that was the "{$somevar" problem. I changed it to "\{$somevar" and it worked.