PHP alpha-1 version 8.3.0. PHP is still alive and continues to grow stronger.

Today, I would like to discuss the new PHP alpha-1 version 8.3.0. What's new and how is PHP stronger than the previous 8.2 version??

Let's firstly discuss changes without backward compatibility.

Core:

• Programs that were very close to overflowing the call stack may now throw an Error when using more than `zend.max_allowed_stack_size-zend.reserved_stack_size` bytes of stack (`fiber.stack_size-zend.reserved_stack_size` for fibers)
• Class constants can now be accessed dynamically using the C::{$name} syntax.
• Executing proc_get_status() multiple times will now always return the right value on posix systems. Previously, only the first call of the function returned the right value. Executing proc_close() after proc_get_status() will now also return the right exit code. Previously this would return -1. Internally, this works by caching the result on posix systems. If you want the old behaviour, you can check the "cached" key in the array returned by proc_get_status() to check whether the result was cached.
• Zend Max Execution Timers is now enabled by default for ZTS builds on Linux.
• Uses of traits with static properties will now redeclare static properties inherited from the parent class. This will create a separate static property storage for the current class. This is analogous to adding the static property to the class directly without traits.
• Assigning a negative index n to an empty array will now make sure that the next index is n+1 instead of 0.
• Static variable initializers can now contain arbitrary expressions. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/arbitrary_static_variable_initializers

DOM:

• Assignment to DOMAttr::$value and DOMAttr::$nodeValue no longer expands entities in the new value.
• C functions that have a return type of void now return null instead of returning the following object object(FFI\CData:void) { }

New features added in PHP

Core:

• Anonymous classes may now be marked as readonly.
• Readonly properties can now be reinitialized during cloning. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/readonly_amendments
• Class, interface, trait, and enum constants now support type declarations. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/typed_class_constants
• Closures created from magic methods can now accept named arguments.

Posix:

• posix_getrlimit() now takes an optional $res parameter to allow fetching a single resource limit.
• posix_isatty() now raises type warnings for integers following the usual ZPP semantics
• posix_ttyname() now raises type warnings for integers following the usual ZPP semantics and value warnings for invalid file descriptor integers.

Changes in SAPI modules

• $_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'] value from the built-in CLI server changed to make it compliant with RFC3875.

Deprecated Functionality

• The U_MULTIPLE_DECIMAL_SEP*E*RATORS constant had been deprecated, using the U_MULTIPLE_DECIMAL_SEP*A*RATORS instead is recommended.

Changed Functions

Core level:

• gc_status() has added the following 4 fields: "running" => bool "protected" => bool "full" => bool "buffer_size" => int. See GH-9336
• class_alias() now supports creating an alias of an internal class.
• Setting `open_basedir` at runtime using `ini_set('open_basedir', ...);` no longer accepts paths containing the parent directory (`..`). Previously, only paths starting with `..` were disallowed. This could easily be circumvented by prepending `./` to the path.

DOM:

• Changed DOMCharacterData::appendData() tentative return type to true.

Intl:

• datefmt_set_timezone (and its alias IntlDateformatter::setTimeZone) now returns true on success, previously null was returned.
• IntlBreakiterator::setText() now returns false on failure, previously null was returned. Now returns true on sucess, previously null was returned.
• IntlChar::enumCharNames is now returning a boolean. Previously it returned null on success and false on failure.

MBString:

• mb_strtolower, mb_strtotitle, and mb_convert_case implement conditional casing rules for the Greek letter sigma. For mb_convert_case, conditional casing only applies to MB_CASE_LOWER and MB_CASE_TITLE modes, not to MB_CASE_LOWER_SIMPLE and MB_CASE_TITLE_SIMPLE.
• mb_decode_mimeheader interprets underscores in QPrint-encoded MIME encoded words as required by RFC 2047; they are converted to spaces. Underscores must be encoded as "=5F" in such MIME encoded words.
• In rare cases, mb_encode_mimeheader will transfer-encode its input string where it would pass it through as raw ASCII in PHP 8.2.
• mb_encode_mimeheader no longer drops NUL (zero) bytes when QPrint-encoding the input string. This previously caused strings in certain text encodings, especially UTF-16 and UTF-32, to be corrupted by mb_encode_mimeheader.
• mb_detect_encoding's "non-strict" mode now behaves as described in the documentation. Previously, it would return false if the same byte (for example, the first byte) of the input string was invalid in all candidate encodings. More generally, it would eliminate candidate encodings from consideration when an invalid byte was seen, and if the same input byte eliminated all remaining encodings still under consideration, it would return false. On the other hand, if all candidate encodings but one were eliminated from consideration, it would return the last remaining one without regard for how many encoding errors might be encountered later in the string. This is different from the behavior described in the documentation, which says: "If strict is set to false, the closest matching encoding will be returned."

mysqli:

• mysqli_fetch_object now raises a ValueError instead of an Exception when the constructor_args argument is non empty with the class not having constructor.
• mysqli_poll now raises a ValueError when the read nor error arguments are passed.

PGSQL:

• pg_fetch_object now raises a ValueError instead of an Exception when the constructor_args argument is non empty with the class not having constructor.
• pg_insert now raises a ValueError instead of a WARNING when the table specified is invalid.
• pg_insert and pg_convert raises a ValueError or a TypeError instead of a WARNING when the value/type of a field does not match properly with a PostGreSQL's type.

Standard:

• E_NOTICEs emitted by unserialize() have been promoted to E_WARNING. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/improve_unserialize_error_handling
• unserialize() now emits a new E_WARNING if the input contains unconsumed bytes. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/unserialize_warn_on_trailing_data
• array_pad() is now only limited by the maximum number of elements an array can have. Before, it was only possible to add at most 1048576 elements at a time.
• strtok() raises a warning in the case token is not provided when starting tokenization.
• password_hash() will now chain the underlying Random\RandomException as the ValueError’s $previous Exception when salt generation fails.
• proc_open() $command array must now have at least one non empty element.
• array_sum() and array_product() now warn when values in the array cannot be converted to int/float. Previously arrays and objects where ignored whilst every other value was cast to int. Moreover, objects that define a numeric cast (e.g. GMP) are now casted instead of ignored. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/saner-array-sum-product

New Functions

JSON:

• Added json_validate(), which returns whether the json is valid for the given $depth and $options. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/json_validate

Posix:

• Added posix_sysconf call to get runtime informations.
• Added posix_pathconf call to get configuration value from a directory/file.
• Added posix_fpathconf call to get configuration value from a file descriptor.
• Added posix_eaccess call to check the effective user id's permission for a path.

Random:

• Added Randomizer::getBytesFromString(). RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/randomizer_additions
• Added Randomizer::nextFloat(), ::getFloat(), and IntervalBoundary. RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/randomizer_additions
• Changed mt_srand() and srand() to not check the number of arguments to determine whether a random seed should be used. Passing null will generate a random seed, 0 will use zero as the seed. The functions are now consistent with Mt19937::__construct().

Reflection:

• Return type of ReflectionClass::getStaticProperties() is no longer nullable.

Sockets:

• Added socket_atmark to checks if the socket is OOB marked.

New Global Constants

Intl:

• MIXED_NUMBERS (Spoofchecker).
• HIDDEN_OVERLAY (Spoofchecker).

OpenSSL:

• OPENSSL_CMS_OLDMIMETYPE
• PKCS7_NOOLDMIMETYPE

PCNTL:

• SIGINFO

PGSQL:

• PGSQL_TRACE_SUPPRESS_TIMESTAMPS
• PGSQL_TRACE_REGRESS_MODE
• PGSQL_ERRORS_SQLSTATE

Posix:

• POSIX_SC_ARG_MAX
• POSIX_SC_PAGESIZE
• POSIX_SC_NPROCESSORS_CONF
• POSIX_SC_NPROCESSORS_ONLN

Sockets:

• SO_ATTACH_REUSEPORT_CBPF (Linux only)
• TCP_QUICKACK (Linux only)
• IP_DONTFRAG (FreeBSD only)
• IP_MTU_DISCOVER (Linux only)
• IP_PMTUDISC_DO (Linux only)
• IP_PMTUDISC_DONT (Linux only)
• IP_PMTUDISC_WANT (Linux only)
• IP_PMTUDISC_PROBE (Linux only)
• IP_PMTUDISC_INTERFACE (Linux only).
• IP_PMTUDISC_OMIT (Linux only).
• AF_DIVERT (FreeBSD only).
• SOL_UDPLITE.
• UDPLITE_RECV_CSCOV.
• UDPLITE_SEND_CSCOV.
• SO_RERROR (NetBSD only).
• SO_ZEROIZE (OpenBSD only).
• SO_SPLICE (OpenBSD only).
• TCP_REPAIR (Linux only).
• SO_REUSEPORT_LB (FreeBSD only).
• IP_BIND_ADDRESS_NO_PORT (Linux only).

Changes to INI File Handling

• zend.max_allowed_stack_size

New INI directive to set the maximum allowed stack size. Possible values are `0` (detect the process or thread maximum stack size), `-1` (no limit), or a positive number of bytes. The default is `0`. When it is not possible to detect the the process or thread maximum stack size, a known system default is used. Setting this value too high has the same effect as disabling the stack size limit. Fibers use fiber.stack_size as maximum allowed stack size. An Error is thrown when the process call stack exceeds `zend.max_allowed_stack_size-zend.reserved_stack_size` bytes, to prevent stack-overflow-induced segmentation faults, with the goal of making debugging easier. The stack size increases during uncontrolled recursions involving internal functions or the magic methods __toString, __clone, __sleep, __destruct.?This is not related to stack buffer overflows, and is not a security feature.

• zend.reserved_stack_size

New INI directive to set the reserved stack size, in bytes. This is subtracted from the max allowed stack size, as a buffer, when checking the stack size.

Other Changes

Core:

An Error is now thrown when the process call stack exceeds a certain size, to prevent stack-overflow-induced segmentation faults, with the goal of making debugging easier. The maximum allowed stack size is controlled by the INI directives zend.max_allowed_stack_size, zend.reserved_stack_size, and fiber.stack_size.

FFI:

FFI::load() is now allowed during preloading when opcache.preload_user is the current system user. Previously, calling FFI::load() was not possible during preloading if the opcache.preload_user directive was set.

Opcache:

In the cli and phpdbg SAPIs, preloading does not require the opcache.preload_user directive to be set anymore when running as root. In other SAPIs, this directive is required when running as root because preloading is done before the SAPI switches to an unprivileged user.

Streams:

Blocking fread() on socket connection returns immediately if there are any buffered data instead of waiting for more data.

I think PHP's developers are really listening to the community and improving the performance of PHP.