There Will Be Many Features Coming For PHP 7.1

PHP 7 was just released over one month ago but there is already much work going into PHP 7.1, the next major update to this widely-used web programming language.

PHP 7.0 is most notable for the huge performance improvements compared to PHP5 and some new language features. With PHP 7.1, there are more features coming for when it's released later this year.

For some weekend reading, I was poking around for a look at some PHP 7.1 features already committed as well as some other likely material.

The tentative news items for work already found in PHP Git includes:

- PHP 7.1 adds support for a void return type.

- SHA3 fixed mode algorithms were added.

- The bundled SQLite library is updated against 3.9.2 rather than 3.8.

- Various bug fixes and other minor improvements.

Other items being planned and/or talked about for PHP 7.1 include:

- PHP Cryptography Objects (PCO) for better encryption/decryption/signing.

- Short closures.

- Generic types and functions.

- HTTP/2 and server push support.

Other proposals for future releases of PHP (not necessarily PHP 7.1) can be found via the RFC Wiki area. Stay tuned for more coverage of PHP 7.1 as its release approaches later in the year.