PHP core developer Pierre Joye recently posted on the official website about new features that may appear in PHP6. The reason for saying “may appear” is that the PHP6 project is currently still in the draft stage. These features are just ideas, still need discussion, and could change at any time.
These features include:
- Integrated OpCache (OPcache caches and optimizes PHP opcode to improve PHP execution speed)
- Improved 64-bit environment support
- Unicode support
- Internal API cleanup
- Code quality improvements, achieving Warning-Free status
- Improved OPcodes, compiler, and runtime
- JIT compiler (LibJIT?)
- Annotation support
- Named arguments
- Multiple levels of type hints
- HTTP 2.0 protocol support (likely using nghttp2 to avoid reinventing the wheel)
- Reliable, user-friendly RNG API
- New Getter/Setter syntax
- C++ usage
- New encryption extension
- Bundled PECL HTTP library