PHP 5.5 Updated, Version 5.3 On Its Way Out

PHP is the weapon of choice for lots Web developers. It’s an excellent thing then that the team behind it’s been very diligent with its releases. Surely, they’ve got recently released an update to handle some bugs which have popped up within the latest version.

If you recall, the PHP Group in late June released PHP 5.5. This latest version included quite a few additions and improvements. For a refresher, here’s the entire new stuff that was added:

  • Added generators and coroutines.
  • Added the finally keyword.
  • Added a simplified password hashing API.
  • Added support for constant array/string dereferencing.
  • Added scalar class name resolution via ::class.
  • Added support for using empty() at the results of function calls and other expressions.
  • Added support for non-scalar Iterator keys in foreach.
  • Added support for list() constructs in foreach statements.
  • Added the Zend OPcache extension for opcode caching.
  • The GD library have been upgraded to version 2.1 adding new functions and improving existing functionality.
  • A lot more improvements and fixes.
  • Since then, the PHP Group was work at work on updating all three major versions of PHP – version 5.3, 5.4 and the newest 5.5 release. Last week, the team released PHP 5.5.1 – a small update that addressed about 20 bugs. One mainly was a bug that was affecting security within the XML sparser.

    They aren’t strictly specializing in version 5.5, however, because the PHP Group also released PHP 5.4.17 in early July. The update fixed about 20 bugs.

    As for PHP 5.3, the team released version 5.3.27 this month besides. They are saying, however, that it’ll be the last regular release within the PHP 5.3 series. There’ll only be security fixes from here on out so Web developers are encouraged to upgrade to version 5.4 or 5.5 immediately.

    If it’s essential to grab any of the above updates, you could access all three on the PHP download page. The Windows binaries also are available there.