The new official PHP version (5.6.0) is now installed on all our servers

Some time ago, we installed the latest bugfix-only version of PHP 5.6.0 on all our web hosting servers. With the whole bunch of improvements and new features, the release candidate showed all the potential to become the new stable version of PHP.

This is why, it comes as no surprise that the PHP Development Team announced today the immediate availability of the new official PHP version – PHP 5.6.0.

This new release comes with new features, some backward-incompatible changes and many improvements.

Here are some of the key features of PHP 5.6.0, as announced on the official PHP site:

• Constant scalar expressions – numeric and string literals and/or constants are now allowed in static-value contexts, such as constant and property declarations or default function arguments
• Variadic functions and argument unpacking using the ‘…’ operator – the variadic functions can now be implemented through the ‘…’ operator instead of the func_get_args() function
• Exponentiation using the ** operator – a right-associative ** operator and a **= shorthand assignment operator have been added to support exponentiation
• Function and constant importing with the use keyword -the use operator now supports importing functions (via the use function construct) and constants (via the use const construct), apart from classes
• A phpdbg debugger -PHP now includes an interactive debugger called phpdbg, which is implemented as a SAPI module
• php://input is now reusable and allows for reading raw data from the request body
• $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA is deprecated
• GMP objects now support operator overloading
• Large file uploads – file uploads larger than 2 GB are now accepted

 Check out the full list of new features in 5.6.0. 

Here is a list of the compatibility changes in PHP 5.6.0:

• Array keys won’t be overwritten when defining an array as a property of a class via an array literal
• json_decode() is more strict in JSON syntax parsing
• Stream wrappers now verify peer certificates and host names by default when using SSL/TLS
• GMP resources are now objects
• Mcrypt functions now require valid keys and IVs

If you use PHP 5.5 or any older version of PHP and want to upgrade to the new 5.6.0 release, you can do so seamlessly with a click from the PHP configuration section of the Web Hosting Control Panel.

Tags: web hosting control panel, PHP

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