PHP would be the most used server-side web programming language in the world. According to a report from the W3Techs 2017, more than 80% of websites and web applications use it. It is a popular scripting language that is quite flexible and pragmatic. Since the release of the first version in 1994, many other versions have emerged. And like all other languages, it evolves and regularly brings new features and bug fixes. Its latest stable release, 7.2.6, was released on May 25, 2018. And now, PHP announces the availability of its 7.3.0 alpha 1 release since June 7, 2018. Although this test pre-release can not be used in production, PHP developers can already test it and report bugs and improvements they want to have for the next stable release which is scheduled for release at the end of 2018.
After the release of this first test pre-release, PHP developers expect the release of three alpha versions and three beta versions by mid-August 2018 then six eligible versions (pre-release), the RC, which will be released every two weeks. After that, the stable version 7.3.0 will be available on November 29, 2018 according to the established schedule. Already in this preview preemptive 7.3.0 alpha 1, new features are worth noting. In the core, the net_get_interfaces () function is available to list the available network adapters in the operating system. A new method has been added to the Date class: DateTime :: createFromImmutable (). The JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR flag has been added to JSON. For SQLite3, libsqlite has been updated to version 3.24.0. The openssl_pkey_derive function has been added for OpenSSL.
Several bugs have also been fixed and among them we have:
# 75683 (lack of memory in zend_register_functions () in ZTS mode);
# 74860 (uncaught exceptions are not formatted correctly when error_log is set to syslog);
# 53033 (mathematical operations convert objects to integer)
# 75765 (fatal error instead of exception error when the parent class is not found);
# 74941 (the session does not start after sending the headers).
