PHP 5.4 approaches with first release candidate

The PHP development team has announced the arrival of the first release candidate (RC1) of version 5.4 of its PHP scripting language. The next major release of PHP introduces new language features, such as traits for better code reuse, an integrated web server and a short syntax for arrays. Changes since the second beta include the addition of the ability to access a class member when creating the class and making a conversion from an array to a string produce a notice.

As it is now at the release candidate stage, the team is currently working on finding and fixing bugs in PHP 5.4.0, and no new features will be added before the final version is released. As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. Users testing the release are encouraged to provide feedback and report any bugs that they encounter.

Further information about the release candidate, including a full list of fixes, can be found in the NEWS file. PHP 5.4 RC1 is available to download from the project's QA Team page; Windows binaries are provided on the Windows QA site. The current stable release is PHP 5.3.8, a maintenance and security update from August. PHP source code is distributed under the PHP License v3.01.

(crve)