PHP 5.3 was released today; here are my positive and negatives:
The Good: Closures
Anonymous functions created with create_function have always been a bit messy. With 5.3 comes support for closures with a much cleaner syntax:
$greet = function($name)
{
printf("Hello %s\r\n", $name);
};
$greet('World');
$greet('PHP');
The Bad: Backwards incompatible changes
Although not a massive change from 5.2, there are enough differences to break existing code.
The Ugly: Namespaces
There has been quite a discussion about PHP’s new namespace syntax.
$c = new \my\name\MyClass;
It’s just damn ugly. The more sensible choice, :: is already used as the scope resolution operator and was therefore dismissed.
Glen Scott
I’m a freelance software developer with 18 years’ professional experience in web development. I specialise in creating tailor-made, web-based systems that can help your business run like clockwork. I am the Managing Director of Yellow Square Development.
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