PHP is the most versatile language in the world of web development. It is free, efficient and powerful language of server side and helps in making web pages better.
PHP 7 is a big release for the PHP community as it has come with some great changes after more than a decade. It is considered as a vital change after PHP 5 that came in 2004. It is advisable to learn PHP 7 by joining an institute which covers all the amazing features listed below in their PHP course.
Here are some amazing new features of PHP 7
1. Improvement in speed
It is twice as fast as PHP 5, this is because of PHPNG that is installed in it.
2. Lower memory consumption
PHP 7 consumes less memory without compromising the performance of the system. Hence, providing even better performance.
3. Scalar Type Declarations
PHP 7 is more versatile and has increased better readability of code because of this feature. Now since the scalar type declarations are used which have enabled strict requirements while writing any code and making the documentation of code better.
Though this can be forged because these declarations are non-strict.
4. 64 – bit support
Now the architecture machines are incorporated with 64 bit support system in them for better performance.
5. Better Error Handling Technique
Earlier, if an error occurs the whole script used to stop. But this new release has made the handling of error better as now the exception is thrown rather than stopping the whole script.
6. Removal of unnecessary extensions
All the extensions that were not important and hence unnecessary have been removed in this release.
7. Welcomed new operators
PHP 7 has come with the new operators –
I. Spaceship Operator
Denoted by <=>
Use of this operator is that it will be used in comparing the 2 values and return one out of the 3 results.
if a<b then a = -1
And
if a>b then a = 0
Last one is
if a=b then a = +1
II. Null Coalesce Operator
If the equation is not null then the value on the left will be returned otherwise the value on the right will be returned.
8. CSPRNG for secure random numbers :
In PHP random numbers are generated but there was no secure way of doing in PHP 5. But PHP 7 has come with CSPRNG that stands for Cryptographically Secure PseudoRandom Number Generator.
Now, if these the OS random number generator is hacked then that would get us into trouble and the whole operating system will be at risk.
Secure randoms are highly essential whenever we have been generating random passwords.
So, for this purpose now there are 2 latest functions to use :
Firstly, Random Bytes – This will basically provide you with the string that will contain the cryptographically secure random bytes.
Secondly, Random Int – This will return you a number or integer randomly.
Last but not least, PHP7 uses new Zend Engine 3.0 which will return better performance of the system and will also save a lot of memory. It is specially designed keeping in mind the system of workload that is there nowadays.
Conclusion
So these are some amazing new features that have come up with the release of PHP 7. I have written this blog as a part of my PHP project which was assigned to me by ADMEC Multimedia Institute from where I am pursuing Web Master Course.
