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Thiemos Archiv

Here are my condensed lists of PHP 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 features I'm looking forward to. As usual in order of personal preference.

Whats new in PHP 7.1?

  • Class constants can be made protected and private.
  • Nullable type declarations allow to replace function ( ValueType $value = null ) with function ( ?ValueType $value ). The only difference between the two is that the new syntax does not make the parameter optional any more.
  • void as a return type.
  • We can replace array|Traversable type hints with iterable now. is_iterable() goes along with this new pseudo type.
  • catch ( TypeAException | TypeBException $ex )
  • list() supports keys. This is pretty significant. Before, we could only deconstruct numerically indexed, non-sparse arrays.
  • Instead of list( $a, $b ) =, we can now write [ $a, $b ] =.
  • We can replace substr( $string, -1 ) with $string[-1]. I'm not sure if we should, but we can.
Whats new in PHP 7.2?
  • We can finally replace \stdClass type hints with object.
  • mb_chr() as well as mb_ord() are new.
  • Having dealt with the oddities of IEEE floating point numbers before, I find the new constants PHP_FLOAT_MIN, PHP_FLOAT_MAX, PHP_FLOAT_EPSILON, and PHP_FLOAT_DIG fascinating. Even if they won't end in a lot of code, they give some insight into how floating point numbers work.
  • Regular expressions support the /J modifier, which makes it possible to have the same named capturing group multiple times in the regular expression. Note that the inline (?J) was already supported before.
  • PREG_UNMATCHED_AS_NULL (instead of empty strings) will definitely come in handy.
  • The GD extension can read and write BMP files now. Uh, what? o_O? In exchange, a few awkwardly specific WBMP conversion functions got deprecated.
  • create_function() got deprecated in favor of anonymous functions.
  • each() got deprecated in favor of foreach.
Whats new in PHP 7.3?
  • mb_strtoupper( 'Straße' ) now produces »STRASSE«. I find this a super-welcome addition. But it can also have massive implications, like changing the result of string comparisons.
  • is_countable() is true for arrays and objects that implement Countable.
  • array_key_first() and array_key_last() can often act as a much cleaner replacement for complicated code utilizing array_keys(), or awkward combinations of end() and key().
  • Array destructuring can be combined with references: list( &$a ). Same for the new [ … ] = syntax.
  • The heredoc syntax for strings became more flexible. Most notably: the closing marker can be indented.
About floating point: It´s always funny to see that how hard (impossible?) it is to abstract the underlying implementation away

Not sure what to think of the mb_strtoupper() modification being introduced now after big ß support is pretty common ;o
TS
The Law of Leaky Abstractions: »All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky.«
Thiemo
Ich hab erst jetzt ein issue von dir von 2012 bemerkt.
https://github.com/tomaes/primevis/issues/1

(besser spät als nie? ;)
tom

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