Thank You for making empty() to support arbitrary expressions!
Support for generators has been added via the yield keyword. Generators provide an easy way to implement simple iterators without the overhead or complexity of implementing a class that implements the Iterator interface.
A simple example that reimplements the range() function as a generator (at least for positive step values):
<?php
function xrange($start, $limit, $step = 1) {
for ($i = $start; $i <= $limit; $i += $step) {
yield $i;
}
}
echo 'Single digit odd numbers: ';
/*
* Note that an array is never created or returned,
* which saves memory.
*/
foreach (xrange(1, 9, 2) as $number) {
echo "$number ";
}
echo "\n";
?>
The above example will output:
Single digit odd numbers: 1 3 5 7 9
try-catch blocks now support a finally block for code that should be run regardless of whether an exception has been thrown or not.
A new password hashing API that makes it easier to securely hash and manage passwords using the same underlying library as crypt() in PHP has been added. See the documentation for password_hash() for more detail.
The foreach control structure now supports unpacking nested arrays into separate variables via the list() construct. For example:
<?php
$array = [
[1, 2],
[3, 4],
];
foreach ($array as list($a, $b)) {
echo "A: $a; B: $b\n";
}
?>
The above example will output:
A: 1; B: 2 A: 3; B: 4
Further documentation is available on the foreach manual page.
Passing an arbitrary expression instead of a variable to empty() is now supported. For example:
<?php
function always_false() {
return false;
}
if (empty(always_false())) {
echo "This will be printed.\n";
}
if (empty(true)) {
echo "This will not be printed.\n";
}
?>
The above example will output:
This will be printed.
Array and string literals can now be dereferenced directly to access individual elements and characters:
<?php
echo 'Array dereferencing: ';
echo [1, 2, 3][0];
echo "\n";
echo 'String dereferencing: ';
echo 'PHP'[0];
echo "\n";
?>
The above example will output:
Array dereferencing: 1 String dereferencing: P
It is possible to use ClassName::class to get a fully qualified name of class ClassName. For example:
<?php
namespace Name\Space;
class ClassName {}
echo ClassName::class;
echo "\n";
?>
The above example will output:
Name\Space\ClassName
The Zend Optimiser+ opcode cache has been added to PHP as the new OPcache extension. OPcache improves PHP performance by storing precompiled script bytecode in shared memory, thereby removing the need for PHP to load and parse scripts on each request. See the installation instructions for more detail on enabling and using OPcache.
foreach now supports keys of any type. While non-scalar keys cannot occur in native PHP arrays, it is possible for Iterator::key() to return a value of any type, and this will now be handled correctly.
The Apache 2.4 handler SAPI is now supported on Windows.
Various improvements have been made to the GD extension, these include:
Thank You for making empty() to support arbitrary expressions!
The array and string dereferencing is awesome! Thanks for this.
Finally, array and string literal dereferencing is here, bless you all!
All the new features are incredible. I had always been waiting for such things to be happened.
Yield is awesome... it's starts to look like a real language now ;-)
class myList {
public $list;
public function __construct($list) {
$this->list = $list;
}
public function select(...$keys) {
$keys_array = array_fill_keys($keys, null);
$items = $this->list;
foreach($items as $item) {
yield array_merge($keys_array, array_intersect_key($item, $keys_array));
}
}
}
Array dereferencing with defaults for possibly empty sources;
<?php
// string(4) "def2"
$x = ([] ?: ["def1", "def2"])[1];
?>