PHP 5.3.0 Release Announcement

The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP
5.3.0. This release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes
a large number of new features and bug fixes.

The key features of PHP 5.3.0 include:

    * Support for namespaces
    * Late static binding
    * Lambda Functions and Closures
    * Syntax additions: NOWDOC, ternary short cut "?:" and jump label
(limited goto), __callStatic()
    * Under the hood performance improvements
    * Optional garbage collection for cyclic references
    * Optional mysqlnd PHP native replacement for libmysql
    * Improved Windows support including VC9 and experimental X64 binaries
as well as portability to other supported platforms
    * More consistent float rounding
    * Deprecation notices are now handled via E_DEPRECATED (part of E_ALL)
instead of the E_STRICT error level
    * Several enhancements to enable more flexiblity in php.ini (and ini
parsing in general)
    * New bundled extensions: ext/phar, ext/intl, ext/fileinfo, ext/sqlite3,
ext/enchant
    * Over 140 bug fixes and improvements to PHP, in particular to:
ext/openssl, ext/spl and ext/date

This release also drops several extensions and unifies the usage of internal
APIs. Users should be aware of the following known backwards compatibility
breaks:

    * Parameter parsing API unification will cause some functions to behave
more or less strict when it comes to type juggling
    * Removed the following extensions: ext/mhash (see ext/hash), ext/msql,
ext/pspell (see ext/enchant), ext/sybase (see ext/sybase_ct)
    * Moved the following extensions to PECL: ext/ming, ext/fbsql,
ext/ncurses, ext/fdf
    * Removed zend.ze1_compatibility_mode

For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available here,
detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.0.

For a full list of changes in PHP 5.3.0, see the ChangeLog.
--
Otávio Calaça Xavier
Desenvolvedor Web
Tecgº. Redes de Comunicação
poomax.com.br