Namespaces, the most awaited feature of PHP6 have been added last Tuesday to PHP CVS by Dmitry Stogov. While current discussions in the community are about moving to PHP5, the next generation of PHP is getting ready for production, but with less API change I hope.
If you are familiar with C++ or Python, you should be also familiar with namespaces. Otherwise a good definition from Wikipedia :
“A namespace is a context in which a group of one or more identifiers might exist. An identifier defined in a namespace is associated with that namespace. The same identifier can be independently defined in multiple namespaces, that is, the meaning associated with an identifier defined in one namespace is independent of the same identifier declared in any other namespace.”
Of course there is also the unicode support which have been added with Namespaces. The new feature will probably take some time to get tested correctly, until some others features join the list.
If PHP4 support will be dropped this year, I wonder when PHP5 support will be dropped when PHP6 will be officially available and stable.
http://news.php.net/php.zend-engine.cvs/5894
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namespace_(computer_science)
http://www.brainfault.com/2007/07/14/php-get-namespaces/
