It varies, but it's often server configuration as much as language version. You'll still find servers with magic_quotes enabled and a bunch of features disabled.
VPS is a better alternative, but at that point it's just as easy to use something other than PHP.
I hope there will come a time for some standardization for web hosts where minimum versions for software packages and sane defaults are enforced. I agree, anyone deploying on VPS really don't have shared host bounds any more.
VPS is a better alternative, but at that point it's just as easy to use something other than PHP.