PHP8 : What’s new?
Better performance, better syntax, improved type safety.
PHP 8 was released on 26 Nov 2020. Since it’s a major release it came with lots of new features and optimizations, I’ve listed few of them below.
Named arguments
Named arguments allow passing arguments to a function based on the parameter name, rather than the parameter position. This makes the meaning of the argument self-documenting, makes the arguments order-independent, and allows skipping default values arbitrarily.
If you notice in above example I did not follow the parameter order while calling details() function.
It is possible to combine named arguments with normal, positional arguments and it is also possible to specify only some of the optional arguments of a function, regardless of their order. More on Named arguments
Constructor Promotion
When a constructor argument includes a visibility modifier, PHP will interpret it as both an object property and a constructor argument, and assign the argument value to the property. The constructor body may then be empty or may contain other statements. More on Constructor Promotion
Union types
Union types are available as of PHP 8.0.0.
A union type declaration accepts values of multiple different types, rather than a single one. Union type declarations that are validated at runtime.
The null type is supported as part of unions, such that T1|T2|null can be used to create a nullable union. The false literal type is supported as part of unions. More on Union types
Match expression
The match expression is similar to a switch statement but has some key differences:
- A match arm compares values strictly (===) instead of loosely as the switch statement does.
- A match expression returns a value.
- Match arms do not fall-through to later cases the way switch statements do.
- A match expression must be exhaustive.
More on Match expression
Nullsafe operator
Instead of null check conditions, you can now use a chain of calls with the new nullsafe operator.
When the evaluation of one element in the chain fails, the execution of the entire chain aborts and the entire chain evaluates to null. More on Nullsafe operator
Saner string to number comparisons
When comparing to a numeric string, PHP 8 uses a number comparison. Otherwise, it converts the number to a string and uses a string comparison.
More on Saner string to number comparisons
If you want to know all the features which were added in PHP8, Please visit PHP8 release note and PHP8 Change log.
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