So out of curiosity what are your thoughts on PHP 7? Personally i find it a big upgrade from previous versions some of the newer features i like is...

 

Short hand version for writing arrays(PHP 5.4)

 

Well this is not to much shorter but it does look neater

 

instead of writing arrays like this...

$colors = array("color1","color2","color3");

you can write arrays like this...

$colors = ["color1","color2","color3"];

As noted below shorthand arrays actually came out in PHP 5.4 . My Mistake

 

Type Hints

 

You can now apply data type hints to parameters of functions/class methods

function hello(string $msg){
return $msg;
}

echo hello("Hello World");

you can also turn on strict type mode in order to hold you accountable by displaying a fatal error if you pass a data type other then the type specified.

declare(strict_types=1);

that line must be the first line on the page. And it has to go on each page. There is no way to make it global

 

The ?? Operator

 

Normally you would do this ...

$action = (isset($_GET['action')) ? $_GET['action'] : "no_action_set";

Now you can do a short hand version using ??

$action = $_GET['action'] ?? "no_action_set";

Constant Arrays

 

You can now define array constants using define instead of just const

define("COLORS",
["red","blue","orange"]
);

SPEED

 

PHP 7 is said to be about 3x faster than PHP 5.6

Edited May 16, 20179 yr by webdesigner93

Great outline, thanks! I have to say I've really noticed the speed differences. Makes life a lot easier.

I don't think the array shorthand is PHP7, I've definitely used it on older versions. I like the strict typing stuff they've added though.

I haven't gotten the chance to check out many of the new features, but I find anonymous classes to be a cool new feature. I'm not entirely sure why it hasn't been added yet, though.

 

PHP 5.4 http://php.net/releases/5_4_0.php

Mmm wonder why some people have listed that as a new feature of PHP 7 personally i've never used it before so figure it was. Thanks Jack and Nock for the correction.

Edited May 16, 20179 yr by webdesigner93

I haven't gotten the chance to check out many of the new features, but I find anonymous classes to be a cool new feature. I'm not entirely sure why it hasn't been added yet, though.

Anonymous classes are already added haven't fooled around with them yet tho

Anonymous classes are already added haven't fooled around with them yet tho

Yeah, I didn't phrase my sentence properly. I meant to say: I wonder why it hasn't been added until now.