PHP 5.4 and Zend Framework 2.0 Coming in 2012

It has been more than two years since the last major release of PHP, with PHP 5.3 debuting in June of 2009, which means it’s almost time for a new major release.

PHP 5.4 is currently in beta and will make multiple improvements over the current PHP 5.3 release.

“There are a lot of improvements in PHP 5.4, especially around performance and memory use,” Andi Gutmans, CEO of Zend told InternetNews.com. “The fact that we’ve given it the beta name, it means the product is already pretty complete. The community feels good about what’s in there.”

In 2010, Gutmans said that PHP 5.4 would lower PHP’s memory footprint by as much as 35 percent. In PHP 5.4, developers will also be able to turn the MB string on and off, so the multibyte support will be available without having to recompile PHP. According to Gutmans, that will provide a significant advantage to companies that want to have a common build.

From a security point of view, Gutmans noted that Magic Quotes, which in the past has been considered to be a security concern, will reach end-of-life in PHP 5.4.

In PHP 5.3, the most significant new feature was the introduction of namespace support, which is a way to encapsulate classes and other PHP items. The namespace support was a big change for developers, but there likely isn’t going to be the same type of big ticket item in the PHP 5.4 release.

Read the full story at Developer.com:
PHP 5.4 and Zend Framework 2.0 Gearing up for Release

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