PHP v5.3 Alpha 1

I usually don’t update my blog for PHP versions but the announcement made at the beginning of the month really caught my eye.

declare(Ticks=N) Depreciated
First off, they finally depreciated the declare(Ticks…) construct. I never really found a use for this and actually had it crash a web server due to threading issues. Thankfully, PHP is no longer formally supporting this function along with register_tick_function.

Ternary Default
In the last few months I have found myself using the ternary operator extensively to save space. Most of the time it ends up being in the form:

$var .= $other_var ? 'some string' : '';

Thankfully this can now be shortened to simply:

$var .= $other_var ? 'some string' :;

to omit the false case, and to:

$var .= $other_var ?: 'some other string';

to omit the true case.

Namespace
For some reason namespace isn’t currently a reserved word. In v5.3 Alpha 1, it is.

goto Keyword
This one I don’t like. PHP decided to add the dreaded goto/label: construct. I have absolutely no clue why they would do this since it is never needed in modern programming.

Nothing is groundbreaking but most of the changes are a breath of fresh air. My only concern is goto which I hope does not make it to the release branch…