Whats new in PHP?
This is a quick reference on whats been added / removed or upgraded on new versions of php.
PHP 5.5
Release date: 2013-06-20
Features and Updates
- Generators and coroutines
- “finally” keyword
- New password hashing API
- “foreach” now supports list()
- “empty()” supports arbitrary expressions
- Array and string literal dereferencing
- Zend OPcache extension for opcode caching.
- Array_column
- Improvements to GD
- Class name resolution via::class
- Datetime impromvents
- A lot more improvements and fixes.
PHP 5.4
Release date: 2012-03-01
Features and Updates
- Trait support
- Short array syntax support
- Built-in web server (CLI).
- Performance and reduced memory requirements
- Instance Method Call
- Closure Binding
- Objects as Functions ( Function de-refernecing)
- JsonSerializable Interface
- Binary Notation
- Short open tag
- Session Upload progress
- Default charset is now UTF-8
Many more improvement and fixes
Removed items:
- register_globals,
- safe_mode,
- allow_call_time_pass_reference,
- session_register(),
- session_unregister()
- and session_is_registered().
- break / continue $var syntax removed
- ext/sqlite moved to pecl
PHP 5.3
release date: 2009-06-30
Features and Updates
- Namespaces concept is added in Php 5.3
- Support for Late Static Bindings has been added.
- Support for jump labels (limited goto) has been added.
- There are two new magic methods, __callStatic() and __invoke().
- Nowdoc syntax is now supported, similar to Heredoc syntax, but with single quotes.
- Constants can now be declared outside a class using the const keyword.
- Ternary short cut “?:”
- Optional garbage collection for cyclic references
- Optional mysqlnd PHP native replacement for libmysql
- 140+ bug fixes.
Removed items:
Removed the following extensions: ext/mhash (see ext/hash), ext/msql, ext/pspell (see ext/enchant), ext/sybase (see ext/sybase_ct)
Moved the following extensions to PECL: ext/ming, ext/fbsql, ext/ncurses, ext/fdf
Removed zend.ze1_compatibility_mode
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