The PHP team have just announced today the availability of the first alpha release PHP 7.0.0. This is the beginning of the PHP 7 major series. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.
The new alpha release is for development preview and testing only, but not yet ready for production. Some of the new features include :
- Improved performance: PHP 7 is up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6
- Consistent 64-bit support
- Many fatal errors are now Exceptions
- Removal of old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions
- The null coalescing operator (??)
- Combined comparison Operator (<=>)
- Scalar Type Declarations
- Anonymous Classes
More information and download available on the PHP.net website.
