May 27 2009

New PHP 5.3 Release June

Q2 is basically April, May, and June and the 5.3 timeline says Q2 stable release. I’ve been reading mostly good things about the experimental release and considering all the new features being added every php developer should be stoked. I’m not just talking about the new closures/lambda functions which are gonna make my life a lot more fun. Here’s a list of all the fun stuff that I’ll be playing with next month:

  • Namespace support. It’s about time.
  • Late static binding. Somewhere between static and dynamic binding.
  • Jump label (limited goto)
  • Native closures. Simple javascript-like lambda functions. None of that create_function stuff anymore.
  • PHP archives (phar). Not sure why?
  • Garbage collection for circular references.
  • Ternary shortcut. Still haven’t seen an example of what this is?
  • Internationalization extension.

I’ve always been told that goto’s are bad programming practice but sometimes they can be very, very useful. Hopefully they get all the bugs out in the experimental versions and I can start using it at work  shortly after release.

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