PHP5 improved support for object-oriented programming concepts like encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism and abstraction compared to PHP4. It also provides better performance due to changes made to its core C code. PHP5 includes integrated support for SOAP and an exception handling mechanism. The document discusses these PHP5 features and previews potential features of PHP6 like namespace support.

1. PHP5 has made a lot of improvements as regarding OOPS is concerned. Although it has not been
up to the mark with the likes of Java, .NET and C++; but when compared to PHP4, PHP5 has made
significant improvements.
In this post, I propose to cover the following topics:
 About PHP5
 Future of PHP
 New keywords in PHP5
 A note on Garbage Collection
 Naming Conventions
 Note on E_STRICT
 Built in Classes (SPL)
About PHP5
PHP5 has improved support for OOPS when compared to PHP4. The 4 pillars of OOPS
are fully supported by PHP5 i.e. Encapsulation, Inheritance, Polymorphism and
Abstraction. You can also create interfaces; if you have been designing classes for a
while, you know how important interfaces are.
PHP5 also provides performance improvements as it has made significant changes to its
core ‘C’ code. This means that the execution of PHP5 programs will now gain the
needed performance improvement.
PHP5 has an integrated support for SOAP as it provides in-built classes for SOAP calls.
PHP5 offers Exception handling mechanism that was missing in its earlier version. You
no longer have to write your own logic to return different type of values from one function
to another in case of errors. You can now surround your code by try..catch blocks and
write necessary logic inside your functions and raise an Exception. You can also extend
from the existing Exception class to create your own Exception class.
Future of PHP
PHP6 is in development as of July 2007 and the PHP team is considering to add
namespaces support. For java developers, a namespace is an equivalent to packages.
With PHP6 a lot of default options in php.ini will either be removed or be enabled. To
name a few magic_quotes, safe_mode, register_mode will all be removed.
PHP5 also provides performance improvements as it has made significant changes to its
core ‘C’ code. This means that the execution of PHP5 programs will now gain the needed
performance improvement.
PHP5 has an integrated support for SOAP as it provides in-built classes for SOAP calls.
PHP5 offers Exception handling mechanism that was missing in its earlier version. You no
longer have to write your own logic to return different type of values from one function to
another in case of errors. You can now surround your code by try..catch blocks and write

2. necessary logic inside your functions and raise an Exception. You can also extend from the
existing Exception class to create your own Exception class.
Future of PHP
PHP6 is in development as of July 2007 and the PHP team is considering to add
namespaces support. For java developers, a namespace is an equivalent to packages. With
PHP6 a lot of default options in php.ini will either be removed or be enabled. To name a
few magic_quotes, safe_mode, register_mode will all be removed.