PHP (a recursive acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open source language platform widely-used for web development. Thanks in part to its simplicity, power, and compatibility with a wide variety of web servers and operating systems, PHP has rapidly become one of the most popular scripting environments in the world, exceeding all other scripting technologies.
PHP (a recursive acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open source language platform widely-used for web development. Thanks in part to its simplicity, power, and compatibility with a wide variety of web servers and operating systems, PHP has rapidly become one of the most popular scripting environments in the world, exceeding all other scripting technologies.
Even though the current “stable” version of PHP (4.3 as of the time of this writing) is in use by several million websites, the PHP development team — a very active community of volunteers, whose efforts are spearheaded by Zend Technologies (http://www.zend.com), an Israeli company whose co-founders are responsible for the development of the the Zend Engine, the underlying interpreter on which PHP runs — is hard at work preparing the next generation of the platform, PHP 5.
This month, let’s look at some of the major new features in PHP 5. One caveat: with a release date that may very well stretch into 2004, some of the features discussed here could change or be scrapped altogether before the final version of PHP 5 is released.
PHP: Now with True Class(es)
Perhaps the most significant change in the Zend Engine is the introduction of a modern object-oriented programming (OOP) model. Although PHP 4 supports some level of OOP, it was almost an afterthought, resulting in a rather weak, but nonetheless popular implementation, even with all of its limitations.
In PHP, an object is treated just like any…
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