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    New Features

    PHP Core

    Named Arguments

    Support for Named Arguments has been added.

    Attributes

    Support for Attributes has been added.

    Constructor Property Promotion

    Support for constructor property promotion (declaring properties in the constructor signature) has been added.

    Union Types

    Support for union types has been added.

    Match Expression

    Support for match expressions has been added.

    Nullsafe Operator

    Support for the nullsafe operator (?->) has been added.

    Other new Features

    • The WeakMap class has been added.

    • The ValueError class has been added.

    • Any number of function parameters may now be replaced by a variadic argument, as long as the types are compatible. For example, the following code is now allowed:

      <?php
      class A {
           public function       method(int $many, string $parameters, $here) {}
      }
      class       B extends A {
           public function       method(...$everything) {}
      }
      ?>

    • static (as in "late static binding") can now be used as a return type:

      <?php
      class Test {
           public function       create(): static {
                return new static();
           }
      }
      ?>

    • It is now possible to fetch the class name of an object using $object::class. The result is the same as get_class($object).

    • new and instanceof can now be used with arbitrary expressions, using new (expression)(...$args) and $obj instanceof (expression).

    • Some consistency fixes to variable syntax have been applied, for example writing Foo::BAR::$baz is now allowed.

    • Added Stringable interface, which is automatically implemented if a class defines a __toString() method.

    • Traits can now define abstract private methods. Such methods must be implemented by the class using the trait.

    • throw can now be used as an expression. That allows usages like:

      <?php
      $fn       = fn() => throw new Exception('Exception in arrow function');
      $user = $session->user ?? throw new Exception('Must have user');

    • An optional trailing comma is now allowed in parameter lists.

      <?php
      function functionWithLongSignature(
                Type1 $parameter1,
                Type2 $parameter2, // <-- This comma is now allowed.
      ) {
      }

    • It is now possible to write catch (Exception) to catch an exception without storing it in a variable.

    • Support for mixed type has been added.

    • Private methods declared on a parent class no longer enforce any inheritance rules on the methods of a child class (with the exception of final private constructors). The following example illustrates which restrictions have been removed:

      <?php
      class ParentClass {
          private function       method1() {}
          private function       method2() {}
          private static function       method3() {}
                // Throws a warning, as "final" no longer has an effect:
                private final function method4() {}
      }
      class       ChildClass extends ParentClass {
                // All of the following are now allowed, even though the modifiers aren't
          // the same as for the private methods in the parent class.
                public abstract function method1() {}
          public static function       method2() {}
          public function       method3() {}
          public function       method4() {}
      }
      ?>

    • get_resource_id() has been added, which returns the same value as (int) $resource. It provides the same functionality under a clearer API.

    Date and Time

    DOM

    DOMParentNode and DOMChildNode with new traversal and manipulation APIs have been added.

    Filter

    FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOL has been added as an alias for FILTER_VALIDATE_BOOLEAN. The new name is preferred, as it uses the canonical type name.

    Enchant

    enchant_dict_add(), enchant_dict_is_added(), and LIBENCHANT_VERSION have been added.

    FPM

    Added a new option pm.status_listen that allows getting the status from different endpoint (e.g. port or UDS file) which is useful for getting the status when all children are busy with serving long running requests.

    Hash

    HashContext objects can now be serialized.

    Internationalization Functions

    The IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_FULL, IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_LONG, IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_MEDIUM, and IntlDateFormatter::RELATIVE_SHORT constants have been added.

    LDAP

    ldap_count_references() has been added, which returns the number of reference messages in a search result.

    OPcache

    If the opcache.record_warnings ini setting is enabled, OPcache will record compile-time warnings and replay them on the next include, even if it is served from cache.

    OpenSSL

    Added Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) (» RFC 5652) support composed of functions for encryption, decryption, signing, verifying and reading. The API is similar to the API for PKCS #7 functions with an addition of new encoding constants: OPENSSL_ENCODING_DER, OPENSSL_ENCODING_SMIME and OPENSSL_ENCODING_PEM:

    • openssl_cms_encrypt() encrypts the message in the file with the certificates and outputs the result to the supplied file.
    • openssl_cms_decrypt() that decrypts the S/MIME message in the file and outputs the results to the supplied file.
    • openssl_cms_read() that exports the CMS file to an array of PEM certificates.
    • openssl_cms_sign() that signs the MIME message in the file with a cert and key and output the result to the supplied file.
    • openssl_cms_verify() that verifies that the data block is intact, the signer is who they say they are, and returns the certs of the signers.

    Regular Expressions (Perl-Compatible)

    preg_last_error_msg() has been added, which returns a human-readable message for the last PCRE error. It complements preg_last_error(), which returns an integer enum value instead.

    Reflection

    SQLite3

    SQLite3::setAuthorizer() and respective class constants have been added to set a userland callback that will be used to authorize or not an action on the database.

    Standard Library

    • str_contains(), str_starts_with() and str_ends_with() have been added, which check whether haystack contains, starts with or ends with needle, respectively.

    • fdiv() has been added, which performs a floating-point division under IEEE 754 semantics. Division by zero is considered well-defined and will return one of Inf, -Inf or NaN.

    • get_debug_type() has been added, which returns a type useful for error messages. Unlike gettype(), it uses canonical type names, returns class names for objects, and indicates the resource type for resources.

    • printf() and friends now support the %h and %H format specifiers. These are the same as %g and %G, but always use "." as the decimal separator, rather than determining it through the LC_NUMERIC locale.

    • printf() and friends now support using "*" as width or precision, in which case the width/precision is passed as an argument to printf. This also allows using precision -1 with %g, %G, %h and %H. For example, the following code can be used to reproduce PHP's default floating point formatting:

      <?php
      printf      ("%.*H", (int) ini_get("precision"), $float);
      printf("%.*H", (int) ini_get("serialize_precision"), $float);
      ?>

    • proc_open() now supports pseudo-terminal (PTY) descriptors. The following attaches stdin, stdout and stderr to the same PTY:

      <?php
      $proc       = proc_open($command, [['pty'], ['pty'], ['pty']], $pipes);
      ?>

    • proc_open() now supports socket pair descriptors. The following attaches a distinct socket pair to stdin, stdout and stderr:

      <?php
      $proc       = proc_open($command, [['socket'], ['socket'], ['socket']], $pipes);
      ?>

      Unlike pipes, sockets do not suffer from blocking I/O issues on Windows. However, not all programs may work correctly with stdio sockets.

    • Sorting functions are now stable, which means that equal-comparing elements will retain their original order.

    • array_diff(), array_intersect() and their variations can now be used with a single array as argument. This means that usages like the following are now possible:

      <?php
      // OK even if $excludes is empty:
      array_diff($array, ...$excludes);
      // OK even if $arrays only contains a single array:
      array_intersect(...$arrays);
      ?>

    • The flag parameter of ob_implicit_flush() was changed to accept a bool rather than an int.

    Tokenizer

    PhpToken adds an object-based interface to the tokenizer. It provides a more uniform and ergonomic representation, while being more memory efficient and faster.

    Zip

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