What to Expect from PHP 6

PHP has come a long way since its roots as a modified object oriented scripting language for the web in 1995. With its latest development release, the language has added support for Unicode, improved cache and a variety of features meant to make the code more organized.

In an effort to remain at the cutting edge of scripting, the latest PHP release brings the language into a modern era, allowing it to effectively compete against “cleaner” languages such as Ruby on Rails. If you’re a beginning or experienced programmer, these updates will make it much easier to code, adapt and update your web applications.

The adding of full Unicode support is a long standing request that is finally fulfilled with PHP version 6. Whether you are coding an international language or have certain presentation standards, Unicode makes it substantially easier to ensure your business logic and front end presentation are in sync without additional coding standards. Another major change in the development release is an improvement of the functions and a cleaner code structure.

While many previous PHP standards were left over from earlier releases of the language, version 6 modernizes the language substantially.  When it comes to load times and delivery, PHP faces a variety of challenges from large scale applications. To modernize load times and data structures, PHP now has a much improved cache function within its core files. Using alternative PHP cache (APC), the site implements this standard as a core part of the language installation.

One major update improves site security by getting rid of functions such as global registry and safe modes, as well as cookie variables and long arrays. These functions were difficult to deal with and opened up potential security holes. With PHP 6, the language is moving forward with an air tight focus on security and clean code. Returning to its roots as a core object language, PHP 6 implements improvements to extensions and functions unites the code as a pure development standard.

While classes in PHP were a basic attempt to organize an object oriented framework, PHP 6 ads namespaces which more tightly group different elements of code. More flexible than classes these standards can help organize classes, as well as objects and functions for an organized structure. Another adjustment of version six comes in the form of extensions which standardizes what was previously an informal practice. Both the functions and detection of extension types have been improved, helping the language to render better across different browser types.

Currently version 6 is in preliminary release, and can be downloaded for testing. While the release isn’t mature enough to full distribution it can provide insights into how the language will be compiled for future releases. Certain functions are not fully backwards compatible, requiring an update of the code to meet modern standards. Overall, the new version is an evolution (but not a revolution) that should be comfortable for existing PHP coders.  By moving in a more modern, object oriented direction the language is becoming more versatile for full scale web-based development.