This document outlines many changes and improvements made between PHP 5.3 and 5.4, including removing legacy features, improving performance and reducing memory usage, adding new features like traits and array dereferencing, and adding or improving several functions. A timeline is provided targeting a December 2011 release of PHP 5.4 with betas occurring in September and October of 2011. Links to relevant resources are also included.

1. pAUL gAO [email_address] 10-20-2011

2. Removed legacy features Safe mode and all related ini options. register_globals and register_long_arrays ini options. break/continue $var syntax. import_request_variables(). allow_call_time_pass_reference. define_syslog_variables ini option and its associated function. highlight.bg ini option. Session bug compatibility mode (session.bug_compat42 and session.bug_compat_warn ini options). session_is_registered(), session_register() and session_unregister() functions. y2k_compliance ini option. PDO_mysql: Removed support for linking with MySQL client libraries older than 4.1.

3. Performance & Memory Usage Improvement part 1 /php537/php micro_bench.php Max memory usage 1048576 bytes. Running 27.608 s. /php540/php micro_bench.php Max memory usage 524288 bytes. Running 13.254 s.

4. Performance & Memory Usage Improvement part 2 /php537/php NewObjectClassTest.php Running 0.20629 s , 640616 bytes. /php537/php StaticClassTest.php Running 0.35047 s, 640616 bytes. /php540/php NewObjectClassTest.php Running 0.12018 s, 227808 bytes. /php540/php StaticClassTest.php Running 0.10803 s, 227880 bytes.

5. Performance & Memory Usage Improvement part 3 for ($count = 0; $count < 10000000; $count++) { $result = 100 + 100 - 100 * 100 / 100; } /php537/php mathTest.php Running 1.75259 s, 632176 bytes. /php540/php mathTest.php Running 1.06825 s, 223208 bytes.

6. New feature: Traits trait Hello { public function sayHello() { echo 'Hello '; } } trait World { public function sayWorld() { echo ' World'; } } class MyHelloWorld { use Hello, World; public function sayExclamationMark() { echo '!'; } } $o = new MyHelloWorld(); $o->sayHello(); $o->sayWorld(); $o->sayExclamationMark();

7. New feature: Array dereferencing class Foo { public function bar() { } } function func() { return new Foo(); } func()->bar();

8. New Feature: Indirect method call through array class Hello { public function world($x) { echo &quot;Hello, $x\n&quot;; return $this; } } $f = array('Hello','world'); var_dump($f('you'));

9. New feature: Built-in web server Feature for developer. php -S localhost:8000 php -S localhost:8000 -t docroot php -S localhost:8000 routing.php

10. General Improvements part 1 Added closure $this support back. Improved unserialize() performance. Improved performance of @ (silence) operator. Improved parse error messages. Improved output layer. see README.NEW-OUTPUT-API for internals. Added DTrace support.

11. General Improvements part 2 Added multibyte support by default. Previously php had to be compiled with --enable-zend-multibyte. Now it can be enabled or disabled through zend.multibyte directive in php.ini. Added optional argument to debug_backtrace() and debug_print_backtrace() to limit the amount of stack frames returned. Added stream metadata API support and stream_metadata() stream class handler. Added support for storing upload progress feedback in session data

12. New Functions part 1 MySQLnd added named pipes support. Added http_response_code() function. Added JsonSerializable interface. Added FNV-1 hash support. Added hex2bin() function. Reflection extension: Added ReflectionExtension::isTemporary() and ReflectionExtension::isPersistent() methods. Added ReflectionZendExtension class. Added ReflectionClass::isCloneable().

13. New Functions part 2 Added header_register_callback() which is invoked immediately prior to the sending of headers and after default headers have been added. SPL extension: Added RegexIterator::getRegex() method. Added SplObjectStorage::getHash() hook. Added CallbackFilterIterator and RecursiveCallbackFilterIterator. SNMP extension: OO API.

14. Misc. Changes Changed $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'] to include microsecond precision. <?= is now always available regardless of the short_tags setting. Changed default value of &quot;default_charset&quot; php.ini option from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8.

15. Timetable Alpha 1 - June 28 2011 (DONE) http://www.php.net/archive/2011.php#id2011-06-28-1 Alpha 2 - July 14 2011 (DONE) Alpha 3 - August 4 2011 (DONE) Beta 1 - September 15 2011 (DONE) Beta 2 - October 20 2011 (DONE) RC 1 - November 10 2011 So, maybe, Dec 2011 to <RELEASE> 5.4.0?

16. Links Todo: https://wiki.php.net/todo/php54 SVN Repository: http://svn.php.net/repository/php/php-src/branches/PHP_5_4 NEWS http://svn.php.net/repository/php/php-src/branches/PHP_5_4/NEWS Maillist: http://news.php.net/php.internals