New features
PHP 5.3.0 offers a wide range of new features:
-
Support for namespaces has been
added.
-
Support for Late Static
Bindings has been added.
-
Support for jump labels
(limited goto) has been added.
-
Support for native Closures
(Lambda/Anonymous functions) has been added.
-
There are two new magic methods,
__callStatic and
__invoke.
-
Nowdoc syntax is
now supported, similar to
Heredoc syntax,
but with single quotes.
-
It is now possible to use
Heredocs to
initialize static variables and class members/constants.
-
Heredocs may
now be declared using double quotes, complementing the
Nowdoc syntax.
-
Constants can now be
declared outside a class using the const keyword.
-
The ternary
operator now has a shorthand form: ?:.
-
The HTTP stream wrapper now considers all status codes from 200 to 399 to
be successful.
-
Dynamic access to static methods is now possible.
-
Exceptions can now be nested.
-
A garbage collector has been added, and is enabled by default.