PHP 5.4.0 released

by 0x0 • 14 years ago

258 97 14 years ago

They finally added short array syntax, removed register_globals and magic quotes, and the default character set is now UTF-8!

This is good news indeed, they seem to be actually improving the language for once.

rdoherty• 14 years ago

Are there any benchmarks (synthetic or real-world) for the performance improvements? Would have been nice if the release notes had provided some.

robryan• 14 years ago

There are some around like http://news.php.net/php.internals/57760, seen a couple more but forget where. The trend does seem to be towards far better performance across the board though which is good.

0x0• 14 years ago

Here are the NEWS text: http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/tags/php_5_4_0/NEWS?re...

and the UPGRADING instructions: http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/tags/php_5_4_0/UPGRADI...

hinathan• 14 years ago

I'm glad to see the short array syntax. Having strayed from PHP for a while to work on Ruby and JavaScript I'm really enjoying the ability to leave out semicolons in unambiguous end-of-line situations. Would love to see that make it into PHP at some point.

dirkdeman4• 14 years ago

It took them long enough! In 2008 They voted 14/9 against short array syntax, even though a key user group voted 17/3 pro...

chime2• 14 years ago

The best part of short array syntax is that now you don't need named parameters to be supported by the language.

    function foo($opts) {
      echo $opts['source'] . $opts['destination'];
    }
    
    // just one extra pair of [] needed instead of new array()
    foo(['source' => '/123', 'destination' => '/abc']);

Klinky• 14 years ago

You could do that before short syntax:

    foo(array('source' => '/123', 'destination' => '/abc'));

Short syntax will make it less repetitive though. You can also use something like array_merge to emulate jQuery's $.extend for creating defaults.

adorton• 14 years ago

While I agree that it makes it easier to hack in that functionality, it would still be very useful to have named parameters for functions that don't implement that functionality.

For example, fgetcsv takes parameters for delimiter, enclosure, and escape char (as of 5.3). Right now, if I want to specify a different enclosure, I'm forced to specify a delimiter even if I still want to use the default. I'd much prefer the ability to tell the function call that I want to override the enclosure and leave the delimiter alone.

jonstjohn• 14 years ago

Unfortuately, this method of passing an array as a single parameter, rather than actual parameters, is not very self-documenting and leads to more difficult to understand code.

masklinn2• 14 years ago

> The best part of short array syntax is that now you don't need named parameters to be supported by the language

Unless you've ever used languages with actual first-class keyword arguments (Python) and languages using hashes as pseudo-kwargs (Ruby, JavaScript). Then you know it's no substitute.

Also, you could already do just that in PHP before, it simply took 5 more characters.

pavel_lishin3• 14 years ago

Isn't that a bit like leaving a loaded handgun laying around? It's unambiguous today, but what if someone else starts working with your code and it's no longer unambiguous?

(edit: talking about JS only.)

randomdrake• 14 years ago

Big hitters:

array dereferencing - $object->method()[$index] is now valid syntax

built-in webserver via CLI - php -s - http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php

traits and the insteadof operator - http://php.net/language.oop5.traits.php

shortened array syntax - $array = [1, 2, [1, 2, 3], 4];

Finally removed register_globals ;)

Default charset of UTF-8!

Read all about it! http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration54.php

smsm425• 14 years ago

Also it is faster and much better on memory consumption (depends on app of course, but 10-20% speedup and 20-30% less peak memory have been observed on some mainstream apps).

blakeperdue• 14 years ago

Are these numbers based on most previous versions of PHP? I'm on 5.3.10, do you think if I upgraded I would see similar improvements?

manuletroll• 14 years ago

Some of those might just make me do some PHP again.

regularfry• 14 years ago

My thoughts exactly. If the situation warrants it.

tabbyjabby• 14 years ago

Really looking forward to traits. We have some hacks using interfaces and __call that we have been using to try and approximate traits, but the real thing is always much better. :)

maratd2• 14 years ago

Same here. This is a move away from inheritance to mixins. They did a stellar job with it and it's really flexible. Check out http://us2.php.net/traits for the nitty-gritty.

roel_v2• 14 years ago

I've used traits a few times and in each case replaced it later by either inheritance or moving the functionality into separate classes. I'm not getting the design considerations that call for traits over alternatives. How would one use, and why is it the better option?

duskwuff• 14 years ago

> Finally removed register_globals ;)

They've also removed magic_quotes. A few functions that queried its status still exist, but you can't turn it on.

nikic• 14 years ago

The www.php.net mirror will only be rsynced tomorrow, for now use http://docs.php.net/manual/en/migration54.php instead to get infos about 5.4 features. It's a good bit more up to date.

shaunxcode• 14 years ago

I am curious what the internal hang up is which prevents:

funcReturnsFunc(1)(2)

masklinn2• 14 years ago

> I am curious what the internal hang up is which prevents:

PHP's parser is... not exactly a great work of software engineering.

smsm425• 14 years ago

Main problem there is $foo→bar()() which seems to be harder to implement on top of existing parser. Otherwise the patch is here: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/fcallfcall but since it's not complete it wasn't merged.

lukifer• 14 years ago

That array syntax is beautiful, been waiting for that for a long time.

evincarofautumn2• 14 years ago

This bug was apparently “not a bug”: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=51672

pkulak• 14 years ago

I just did a Google search for register_globals... mind boggling.

rickmb• 14 years ago

PHP was originally designed for simple, procedural bits of logic inside individual HTML pages. In that context, there's nothing wrong with the feature itself.

mhitza• 14 years ago

You forgot (new Object)->method()

tlack2• 14 years ago

Other great little changes:

  - you can now do function()[0] 
  - <?= always on despite what you say in the INI
  - safe_mode always off

Seems like a return to sanity for the PHP team, at least temporarily.. I even kinda like the traits!

klausa• 14 years ago

How is '<?=' being always on great change? I always thought it was weird and kind of stupid, but I'm genuinely curious how is that great thing.

Also,

  Chained string offsets - e.g. $a[0][0] where $a is a string - now work.

I have no idea how is that supposed to work. What should be the outcome on, say:

  $a = "foo"; $a[0][0]

What about (assuming $a is still "foo"):

  $a[0][1]

etc.?

there• 14 years ago

I always thought it was weird and kind of stupid, but I'm genuinely curious how is that great thing.

How is it weird and stupid? <?php echo $var ?> is better than <?= $var ?> ?

function_seven3• 14 years ago

I'd say that "<?=" being always-available is a verbosity reduction along the lines of short array syntax. The alternative of using "<?php echo" can be quite noisy for some (me).

This allows short tags to be disabled for XML clash-avoidance while still allowing the user to use the short-form of echo.

chrisrogers• 14 years ago

for '<?=', I see it as a good thing for using php for views. It's faster and more natural to read within typical display markups. Akin to the erb syntax.

mfjordvald• 14 years ago

> $a = "foo"; $a[0][0]

It makes sense when you think of it in offsets. $string[offset] means that given $a = 'foo' then $a[0] is f and given $a = 'f' then $a[0] is f. Thus $a[0][0] would be the first offset of the first offset of "foo". $a[0][1] would not be valid, of course.

Also it's not really something you should ever use, but it's definitely more consistent than throwing an error.

nolok2• 14 years ago

> How is '<?=' being always on great change? I always thought it was weird and kind of stupid, but I'm genuinely curious how is that great thing.

When you share your code with various clients (open source, software seller, ...), you can not assume that short array are on, thus you have to use <?php echo $var ?> everytime instead of the shorter <?=$var?>. Having the second syntax always working solves that, this is on the same level as the short array syntax change, removing a hurdle and letting you concentrate on more important stuff.

> $a = "foo"; $a[0][0]

$a is a string "foo" $a[0] is a string "f" equating to substr($a, 0, 1) $a[0][0] is a string "f" equating to substr($a[0], 0, 1)

> $a[0][1]

This will give an undefined index error, same thing as $a[42] for exemple, since index 1 doesn't exists in $a[0] (= "f")

ryanac• 14 years ago

Many people write their PHP views in raw PHP to remove the (albeit small) overhead from a templating system. I think this is where the PHP short open tag syntax gets used the most (I know I use it there a lot), this is because:

<?=$username;?>

(Personal Preference Alert!) Is easier to read, faster to type and easier for designers to handle than:

<?php echo $username;?>

The downside is, if you deploy your code on a server you don't have access to (meaning you can't enable short tags via php.ini) then you'd have to painfully replace every "<?=" with "<?php echo" BY HAND, find and replace is not allowed.

Eventually, there was a big argument over whether short open tag should be removed in PHP6 (it's not), the biggest reasons for removing it (from what I remember) was that it could conflict with the "<?xml" tag and if you don't have access to php.ini or a modern code editor, you're screwed.

The removal of one of these major problems (by forcing short open tag to work regardless of php.ini settings) brings PHP's short open tag one step closer to being loved and admired by everyone, including YOU, so get used to thinking things like this are great.

As far as chained string offsets, who cares! Long live short open tag! (Sorry I couldn't help it.)

honopu• 14 years ago

sorry when you are motoring through code typing <?php echo $var vs <?=$var it gets to be tedious.

I understand for general php portability that its better to use the <?php echo vs <?=$whatever syntax, but less code is a good thing.

dirkdeman4• 14 years ago

They also improved the zend engine, CURL extension, added Tokyo cabinet abstract and Berkeley DB Support! Added a couple of hashes, Improved JSON Extension (JSON_NUMERIC_CHECK!) and a whole lot of bug fixes. The UTF-8 part was long overdue, glad they fixed that.

I spend a lot of time programming in PHP. Its reputation is pretty bad, but updates like this keep me going!

itmag• 14 years ago

PHP was my first love (actually my second, after QBasic) when I was a teenager.

Would love to get back into it now that it's a "real" language.

Got any good tips about books on modern PHP programming?

dirkdeman4• 14 years ago

Books... not so much. I have another idea: you could check out an MVC-framework like codeigniter or CakePHP. There are numerous tutorials about them, and they give you the added benefit of working with an MVC pattern (knowledge you can use in other languages and frameworks as well, such as Ruby on Rails) and working Object Oriented.

In my opinion, a big drawback of PHP is that it's so easy to screw up because it's easy to pick up. There are so many tutorials out there which will let you make a procedural, cross-scripted, sql-injected security liability spaghetti code... Starting with CodeIgniter or CakePHP is not very hard, especially when you have a little understanding on basic programming with PHP. Good luck!

Revisor• 14 years ago

Since you're not a beginner programmer, I recommend PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice

http://www.amazon.com/Objects-Patterns-Practice-Experts-Sour...

emehrkay• 14 years ago

Added callable typehint.

Nice

roel_v2• 14 years ago

Oh that's a nice one I hadn't noticed yet. Now all that's left is type hints for scalars...

kijin• 14 years ago

Now the question is, when will this become available in mainstream Linux distributions? I guess Arch et al. will get it pretty quickly, followed by Ubuntu 12.10 or maybe 13.04 depending on how many packages it affects.

Good ol' Debian, on the other hand, might or might not get it in time for the Wheezy freeze. CentOS? Forgetaboutit.

sanswork• 14 years ago

You mention two distros that are designed for stability. Thats very different from following the bleeding edge and they have their purpose and reason for it(Which while developers like myself and I assume you sometimes forget, our server admin friends never do). If you want to follow the leading edge there is always also the option of making your own packages.

maratd2• 14 years ago

I use CentOS in my stack. It's going to get it today. Because I'm going to compile it =)

saghul• 14 years ago

You may want to try DotDeb [1], they already have PHP 5.4 packaged for Debian :-)

[1] http://www.dotdeb.org/

Gigablah• 14 years ago

There's nothing stopping you from using, say, remi or webtatic repos on CentOS.

pavelkaroukin• 14 years ago

I see a lot of mentions of zend in extension names, function names.. Could someone elaborate how Zend relates to PHP?

dirkdeman4• 14 years ago

Zend developed the Zend Engine, a virtual machine. PHP4 is based on the Zend engine. Zend is more than just the framework, it literally is the core of PHP.

tobiasgies• 14 years ago

Zend Technologies Ltd. is a company started by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans. The product of theirs you most likely heard of is Zend Framework, a PHP framework. It's however not their only product. Another one is the Zend Engine, which is a PHP interpeter and the virtual machine at the heart of PHP and the reason there are references to Zend all over the place.

function_seven3• 14 years ago

From here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration54.other.php

> Chained string offsets - e.g. $a[0][0] where $a is a string - now work.

Can someone explain why this is? I'm sure I'm misunderstanding, but this seems to mean that the following would work:

  $a = "Hello";
  echo $a[0]; //"h"
  echo $a[0][0]; // also "h"??

What's the point? To avoid failure if I pass a string instead of a 2-dimensional array?

fooyc2• 14 years ago

Consistency. Since $a[0] is a string, you would expect $a[0][0] to work too.

function_seven3• 14 years ago

Thanks. Let me rework my original question then. Why the hell didn't it always work?

  php > $a = "Hello";
  php > echo $a[0];
  H
  php > echo $a[0][0];
  PHP Fatal error:  Cannot use string offset as an array in php shell code on line 1

fooyc2• 14 years ago

Closures can now have a `$this` (by default it is the class in which the closure is declared). No more $that = $this hacks :)

dave1010uk• 14 years ago

There's also Closure::bindTo() [0], which should allow you do do slightly more functional programming, like JavaScript's Function.apply() [1]

[0] http://docs.php.net/manual/en/closure.bindto.php

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global...

orthecreedence2• 14 years ago

This is a nice list of improvements. As someone who spends a lot of the day in PHP-land, this is going to make me happy. As someone who also controls our entire server stack, waiting for someone else to decide to upgrade will not be a problem :)

I'm glad the PHP devs are starting to actually make it a "real" language. It seems like PHP has always been the fat kid bumbling along behind everyone shouting "wait up guys!!" With closures in 5.3, syntax improvements and removal of horrible features (register_globals, magic_quotes, etc) in 5.4, it's shaping up quite nicely.

Thanks, PHP devs!

Pengwin• 14 years ago

> waiting for someone else to decide to upgrade will not be a problem :)

It is sad that a lot of servers are not like this, and PHP 5.4 will take ages to appear, if at all.

Heck, I know of a hosting company still using PHP4.

orthecreedence2• 14 years ago

Funny, I just had to deploy an existing site to a PHP4-only hosting environment. After a few hours of re-writing things I've been taking for granted (a lot of timezone code namely) everything worked fine. But yuck, I felt dirty afterwards.

agildehaus• 14 years ago

Hosting company that still uses PHP4? Name names so we can avoid and chastise them!

pwaring• 14 years ago

It's not really sad, some administrators don't like immediately upgrading to the latest and greatest version. Anyone running Debian stable will probably not get 5.4 until 2013.

CptCodeMonkey• 14 years ago

Seems like the multiyear unit-test coverage campaign is starting to pay off for the core PHP engineers, 5-6 years ago they swore they couldn't do shortened array syntax without major problems.

sbarre• 14 years ago

Also awesome:

"Arrays cast from SimpleXMLElement now always contain all nodes instead of just the first matching node. All SimpleXMLElement children are now always printed when using var_dump(), var_export() and print_r()."

llgrrl_• 14 years ago

One thing that's pretty important too is PHP-FPM. I've been dreaming about this for a long time for my nginx deployments.

http://php-fpm.org/

chrisguitarguy• 14 years ago

Hasn't PHP-FPM been part of the PHP core for a while now? Since 5.3.3 (mid 2010) according the PHP FPM site.

Mikushi• 14 years ago

Yes but has of 5.4 it is now considered stable, whereas before it was still experimental (even tho it worked fine).

evilvoidhamster• 14 years ago

These features can only be good for PHP. Now the community needs to step up and care for the language better. We have seen the popularity of many languages and frameworks rise and fall, but php keeps chugging along. Modern frameworks are awesome, but the community is still rather fractured. I would love to see people more proud of php, to get over the fads around them. Now the language is getting some nice features, I think it's our time to shine :)

mahmud• 14 years ago

Can it add hex now?

https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=61095

greut• 14 years ago

the ticket says Closed, so it better do.

CWIZO• 14 years ago

When will this be available for FreeBSD? I really can't wait for traits, short array syntax and "foo()[0]". This is really a nice upgrade. Good job PHP team!

jaequery2• 14 years ago

array dereferencing - $object->method()[$index] is now valid syntax

finally ....

jaequery2• 14 years ago

shortened array syntax - $array = [1, 2, [1, 2, 3], 4]; ..... can't express how long i waited for these

petdance• 14 years ago

They shipped it with 82 failing tests.

http://gcov.php.net/viewer.php?version=PHP_5_4

Why even bother having a test suite?

fruchtose• 14 years ago

I'm not sure what's more worrying:

* 82 failing tests

* 44 expected test failures

* 1119 compiler warnings

I want to believe that PHP is growing up, but I have to admit I'm not convinced.

PHP 5.4.0 released

Related Stories