Closures

Closure names have been adjusted to include the parent function's name and the line of definition to make them easier to distinguish, for example within stack traces.

Fibers

Fiber switching during destructor execution is now allowed. It was previously blocked due to conflicts with garbage collection.

Destructors may now be executed in a separate Fiber:

When garbage collection is triggered in a Fiber, destructors called by the GC are executed in a separate Fiber: the gc_destructor_fiber. If this Fiber suspends, a new one is created to execute the remaining destructors. The previous gc_destructor_fiber is not referenced anymore by the GC and may be collected if it's not referenced anywhere else. Objects whose destructor is suspended will not be collected until the destructor returns or the Fiber is collected.

Output Handlers

Output handler status flags passed to the flags parameter of ob_start() are now cleared.

output_add_rewrite_var() now uses url_rewriter.hosts instead of session.trans_sid_hosts for selecting hosts that will be rewritten.

apache2handler

Support for EOL Apache 2.0 and 2.2 has been removed. Minimum required Apache version is now 2.4.

CLI

The builtin server looks for an index file recursively by traversing parent directories in case the specified file cannot be located. This process was previously skipped if the path looked like it was referring to a file, i.e. if the last path component contained a period. In that case, a 404 error was returned. The behavior has been changed to look for an index file in all cases.

FPM

Flushing headers without a body will now succeed.

Status page has a new field to display a memory peak.

The /dev/poll events.mechanism setting for Solaris/Illumos had been retired.

Core

trigger_error() and user_error() now have a return type of true instead of bool.

DOM

DOMDocument::registerNodeClass() now has a tentative return type of true instead of bool. It could only ever return true in practice.

Hash

hash_update() now has a tentative return type of true instead of bool. It could only ever return true in practice.

Intl

NumberFormatter::ROUND_TOWARD_ZERO and NumberFormatter::ROUND_AWAY_FROM_ZERO have been added as aliases for NumberFormatter::ROUND_DOWN and NumberFormatter::ROUND_UP to be consistent with the new PHP_ROUND_* modes.

ResourceBundle::get() now has a tentative return type of ResourceBundle|array|string|int|null.

The idn_to_ascii() and idn_to_utf8() functions now always throw ValueErrors if the domain name is empty or too long.

The idn_to_ascii() and idn_to_utf8() functions now always throw ValueError if the variant parameter is not INTL_IDNA_VARIANT_UTS46.

LibXML

libxml_set_streams_context() now immediately throws a TypeError when a non-stream-context resource is passed to the function, instead of throwing later when the stream context is used.

MBString

The behavior of mb_strcut() is more consistent now on invalid UTF-8 and UTF-16 strings. There is no behavioural change for valid UTF-8 and UTF-16 strings.

ODBC

The row of odbc_fetch_object(), odbc_fetch_array(), and odbc_fetch_into() now have a default value of null, consistent with odbc_fetch_row(). Previously, the default values were -1, -1, and 0, respectively.

OpenSSL

The extra_attributes in openssl_csr_new() sets the CSR attributes instead of subject DN, which incorrectly done previously.

The dn in openssl_csr_new() allows setting an array of values for a single entry.

New serial_hex added to openssl_csr_sign() to allow setting serial numbers in the hexadecimal format.

Parsing ASN.1 UTCTime with openssl_x509_parse() fails if seconds are omitted for OpenSSL version below 3.2 (-1 is returned for such fields). OpenSSL version above 3.3 did not load such certificates already.

PDO

It is now possible to fetch the value of the PDO::ATTR_STRINGIFY_FETCHES attribute with PDO::getAttribute().

A new PDO::PGSQL_ATTR_RESULT_MEMORY_SIZE has been added to retrieve the memory usage of query results with PDO::getAttribute() for drivers that support it.

PDO_FIREBIRD

It is now possible to fetch the value of the FB_ATTR_DATE_FORMAT, FB_ATTR_TIME_FORMAT, FB_ATTR_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT, attributes with PDO::getAttribute().

Added new attributes to specify transaction isolation level and access mode. Five constants relating to this functionality have been added:

• Pdo\Firebird::TRANSACTION_ISOLATION_LEVEL
• Pdo\Firebird::READ_COMMITTED
• Pdo\Firebird::REPEATABLE_READ
• Pdo\Firebird::SERIALIZABLE
• Pdo\Firebird::WRITABLE_TRANSACTION

When using persistent connections, there is now a liveliness check in the constructor.

The content that is built changes depending on the value of FB_API_VER in ibase.h. A new static method Pdo\Firebird::getApiVersion() can be used to obtain this information. This information is also now referenced in phpinfo().

Five new data types are now available: INT128, DEC16, DEC34, TIMESTAMP_TZ, TIME_TZ . These are available starting with Firebird 4.0.

PDO_MYSQL

It is now possible to fetch the value of the PDO::ATTR_FETCH_TABLE_NAMES attribute with PDO::getAttribute().

PDO_PGSQL

Support retrieving the memory usage of queries for PDO::PGSQL_ATTR_RESULT_MEMORY_SIZE.

If the column is of type FLOAT4OID or FLOAT8OID the value will now be returned as a float instead of a string.

PGSQL

The conditions parameter of pg_select() is now optional and accepts an empty array.

Phar

The Phar::setAlias(), Phar::setDefaultStub() methods now have a tentative return type of true instead of bool.

POSIX

posix_isatty() now sets the error number when the file descriptor/stream argument is invalid.

Reflection

ReflectionGenerator::getFunction() may now be called after the generator finished executing.

Sockets

The backlog parameter of socket_create_listen() now has a default value of SOMAXCONN. Previously, it was 128.

Sodium

The sodium_crypto_aead_aes256gcm_()* functions are now available on aarch64 CPUs with the ARM cryptographic extensions.

SPL

The SplPriorityQueue::insert(), SplPriorityQueue::recoverFromCorruption(), SplHeap::insert(), SplHeap::recoverFromCorruption() methods now have a tentative return type of true instead of bool.

SplObjectStorage now implements SeekableIterator.

Standard

The default 'cost' value for the PASSWORD_BCRYPT hashing algorithm for password_hash() has been increased from 10 to 12.

debug_zval_dump() now indicates whether an array is packed.

long2ip() now has a return type of string instead of string|false.

highlight_string() now has a return type of string|true instead of string|bool.

print_r() now has a return type of string|true instead of string|bool.

cURL

The minimum libcurl version required is now 7.61.0.

The CURLOPT_DNS_USE_GLOBAL_CACHE option no longer has any effect, and is silently ignored. This underlying feature was deprecated in libcurl 7.11.1, and removed in libcurl 7.62.0.

GMP

Casting a GMP object to bool is now possible instead of emitting a E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR. The casting behaviour is overloaded such that a GMP object representing the value 0 is cast to false.

LibXML

The minimum libxml2 version required is now 2.9.4.

Intl

The behaviour of Intl class has been normalized to always throw Error exceptions when attempting to use a non-initialized object, or when cloning fails.

MBString

Unicode data tables have been updated to Unicode 16.0.

MySQLnd

Support for the new VECTOR data type from MySQL 9.

OpenSSL

The minimum OpenSSL version required is now 1.1.1.

PDO_PGSQL

The minimum libpq version required is now 10.0.

PGSQL

The minimum libpq version required is now 10.0.

SPL

Out of bounds accesses in SplFixedArray now throw exceptions of type OutOfBoundsException instead of RuntimeException. Because OutOfBoundsException is a child class of RuntimeException no behavioural changes are exhibited when attempting to catch those exceptions.

XSL

The typed properties XSLTProcessor::$cloneDocument and XSLTProcessor::$doXInclude are now declared.

Zlib

The minimum zlib version required is now 1.2.11.

Core

Improved the performance of floating point number parsing and formatting in ZTS builds under highly concurrent loads. This affects the printf() family of functions as well as serialization functions such as json_encode(), or serialize().

sprintf() using only %s and %d specifiers will be compiled into the equivalent string interpolation, avoiding the overhead of a function call and repeatedly parsing the format string.

BCMath

Improved performance of number conversions and operations.

DOM

The performance of DOMNode::C14N() is greatly improved for the case without an xpath query. This can give a time improvement of easily two order of magnitude for documents with tens of thousands of nodes.

Improved performance and reduce memory consumption of XML serialization.

Reduced memory usage of node classes.

FTP

Improved the performance of FTP uploads up to a factor of 10x for large uploads.

Hash

Added SSE2 and SHA-NI implementations of SHA-256. This improves the performance on supported CPUs by ~1.3x (SSE2), and 3x - 5x (SHA-NI). Credit to Colin Percival / Tarsnap for this optimization.

MBString

mb_strcut() is much faster now for UTF-8 and UTF-16 strings.

Looking up mbstring encoding names is much faster now.

The performance of converting SJIS-win to Unicode is greatly improved.

MySQLnd

Improved the performance of MySQLnd quoting.

PCRE

Improved the performance of named capture groups.

Random

Improved the performance of Random\Randomizer, with a specific focus on the Random\Randomizer::getBytes(), and Random\Randomizer::getBytesFromString() methods.

SimpleXML

Improved performance and reduce memory consumption of XML serialization.

Standard

The performance of strspn() and strcspn() is greatly improved. They now run in linear time instead of being bounded by quadratic time.

Improved the performance of strpbrk().

get_browser() is much faster now, up to 1.5x - 2.5x for some test cases.

FFI

FFI::load() is now allowed during preloading when opcache.preload_user is the current system user. Previously, calling FFI::load() was not possible during preloading if the opcache.preload_user directive was set.

FPM

FPM CLI test now fails if the socket path is longer than supported by the OS.

Opcache

In the CLI and phpdbg SAPIs, preloading does not require the opcache.preload_user directive to be set anymore when running as root. In other SAPIs, this directive is required when running as root because preloading is done before the SAPI switches to an unprivileged user.

Streams

Blocking fread() on a socket connection returns immediately if there are any buffered data instead of waiting for more data.

A memory stream no longer fails if the seek offset is past the end. Instead, the memory will be increased on the next write and the data between the old end and the offset is filled with zero bytes, similar to how files work.

stat() access operations like file_exists() and similar will now use real path instead of the actual stream path. This is consistent with stream opening.

CLI

The STDOUT, STDERR and STDIN streams are no longer closed on resource destruction which is mostly when the CLI finishes. It is however still possible to explicitly close those streams using fclose() and similar.

Core

gc_status() has added the following 8 fields:

• "running" => bool
• "protected" => bool
• "full" => bool
• "buffer_size" => int
• "application_time" => float: Total application time, in seconds (including collector_time)
• "collector_time" => float: Time spent collecting cycles, in seconds (including destructor_time and free_time)
• "destructor_time" => float: Time spent executing destructors during cycle collection, in seconds
• "free_time" => float: Time spent freeing values during cycle collection, in seconds

class_alias() now supports creating an alias of an internal class.

Setting open_basedir at runtime using ini_set('open_basedir', ...); no longer accepts paths containing the parent directory (..). Previously, only paths starting with .. were disallowed. This could easily be circumvented by prepending ./ to the path.

User exception handlers now catch exceptions during shutdown.

The resultant HTML of highlight_string() and highlight_file() has changed. Whitespace between outer HTML tags is removed. Newlines and spaces are no longer converted to HTML entities. The whole HTML is now wrapped in a

Calendar

easter_date() now supports years from 1970 to 2,000,000,000 on 64-bit systems, previously it only supported years in the range from 1970 to 2037.

Curl

curl_getinfo() now supports two new constants: CURLINFO_CAPATH and CURLINFO_CAINFO. If option is null, the following two additional keys are present: "capath" and "cainfo".

DOM

Changed DOMCharacterData::appendData() tentative return type to true.

DOMDocument::loadHTML(), DOMDocument::loadHTMLFile(), and DOMDocument::loadXML() now have a tentative return type of bool. Previously, this was documented as having a return type of DOMDocument|bool, but, as of PHP 8.0.0, DOMDocument cannot be returned as it is no longer statically callable.

Gd

The signature of imagerotate() has changed. The $ignore_transparent parameter has been removed, as it was ignored since PHP 5.5.0.

Intl

datefmt_set_timezone() (and its alias IntlDateformatter::setTimeZone()) now returns true on success, previously null was returned.

IntlBreakiterator::setText() now returns false on failure, previously null was returned. It now returns true on success, previously null was returned.

IntlChar::enumCharNames() is now returning a boolean. Previously it returned null on success and false on failure.

IntlDateFormatter::__construct() throws an U_ILLEGAL_ARGUMENT_ERROR exception when an invalid locale had been set.

MBString

mb_strtolower() and mb_convert_case() implement conditional casing rules for the Greek letter sigma. For mb_convert_case(), conditional casing only applies to MB_CASE_LOWER and MB_CASE_TITLE modes, not to MB_CASE_LOWER_SIMPLE and MB_CASE_TITLE_SIMPLE.

mb_decode_mimeheader() interprets underscores in QPrint-encoded MIME encoded words as required by RFC 2047; they are converted to spaces. Underscores must be encoded as "=5F" in such MIME encoded words.

In rare cases, mb_encode_mimeheader() will transfer-encode its input string where it would pass it through as raw ASCII in PHP 8.2.

mb_encode_mimeheader() no longer drops NUL (zero) bytes when QPrint-encoding the input string. This previously caused strings in certain text encodings, especially UTF-16 and UTF-32, to be corrupted by mb_encode_mimeheader.

mb_detect_encoding()'s "non-strict" mode now behaves as described in the documentation. Previously, it would return false if the same byte (for example, the first byte) of the input string was invalid in all candidate encodings. More generally, it would eliminate candidate encodings from consideration when an invalid byte was seen, and if the same input byte eliminated all remaining encodings still under consideration, it would return false. On the other hand, if all candidate encodings but one were eliminated from consideration, it would return the last remaining one without regard for how many encoding errors might be encountered later in the string. This is different from the behavior described in the documentation, which says: "If strict is set to false, the closest matching encoding will be returned."

mysqli

mysqli_fetch_object() now raises a ValueError instead of an Exception when the $constructor_args argument is non empty with the class not having constructor.

mysqli_poll() now raises a ValueError when neither the $read nor the $error arguments are passed.

mysqli_field_seek() and mysqli_result::field_seek() now specify the return type as true instead of bool.

ODBC

odbc_autocommit() now accepts null for the $enable parameter. Passing null has the same behaviour as passing only 1 parameter, namely indicating if the autocommit feature is enabled or not.

PGSQL

pg_fetch_object() now raises a ValueError instead of an Exception when the $constructor_args argument is non empty with the class not having constructor.

pg_insert() now raises a ValueError instead of a E_WARNING when the table specified is invalid.

pg_insert() and pg_convert() raises a ValueError or a TypeError instead of a E_WARNING when the value/type of a field does not match properly with a PostgreSQL's type.

The $row parameter of pg_fetch_result(), pg_field_prtlen(), and pg_field_is_null() is now nullable.

Random

Changed mt_srand() and srand() to not check the number of arguments to determine whether a random seed should be used. Passing null will generate a random seed, 0 will use zero as the seed. The functions are now consistent with Random\Engine\Mt19937::__construct().

Reflection

Return type of ReflectionClass::getStaticProperties() is no longer nullable.

Standard

E_NOTICEs emitted by unserialize() have been promoted to E_WARNING.

unserialize() now emits a new E_WARNING if the input contains unconsumed bytes.

array_pad() is now only limited by the maximum number of elements an array can have. Before, it was only possible to add at most 1048576 elements at a time.

strtok() raises an E_WARNING in the case token is not provided when starting tokenization.

password_hash() will now chain the underlying Random\RandomException as the ValueError's $previous Exception when salt generation fails.

If using an array as the $command for proc_open(), it must now have at least one non empty element. Otherwise a ValueError is thrown.

proc_open() returns false if $command array is invalid command instead of resource object that produces warning later. This was already the case for Windows but it is now also the case if a posix_spawn implementation is in use (most Linux, BSD and MacOS platforms). There are still some old platforms where this behavior is not changed as posix_spawn is not supported there.

array_sum() and array_product() now warn when values in the array cannot be converted to int/float. Previously arrays and objects where ignored whilst every other value was cast to int. Moreover, objects that define a numeric cast (e.g. GMP) are now casted instead of ignored.

The $decimals of number_format() now properly handles negative integers. Rounding with a negative value for $decimals means that $num is rounded to $decimals significant digits before the decimal point. Previously negative $decimals were silently ignored and the number got rounded to zero decimal places.

A new $before_needle argument has been added to strrchr(). It behaves like its counterpart in the strstr() or stristr() functions.

str_getcsv() and fgetcsv() now return an empty string instead of a string with a single null byte for the last field which only contains an unterminated enclosure.

Core

Using the increment/decrement operators (++/--) on values of type bool now emit warnings. This is because it currently has no effect, but will behave like $bool += 1 in the future.

Using the decrement operator (--) on values of type null now emit warnings. This is because it currently has no effect, but will behave like $null -= 1 in the future.

Internal objects that implement an _IS_NUMBER cast but not a do_operator handler that overrides addition and subtraction now can be incremented and decrement as if one would do $o += 1 or $o -= 1

DOM

The DOM lifetime mechanism has been reworked such that implicitly removed nodes can still be fetched. Previously this resulted in an exception.

SQLite3

The SQLite3 class now throws SQLite3Exception (extends Exception) instead of Exception.

The SQLite error code is now passed in the exception error code instead of being included in the error message.

DOM

Looping over a DOMNodeList now uses caching. Therefore requesting items no longer takes quadratic time by default.

Getting text content from nodes now avoids an allocation, resulting in a performance gain.

DOMChildNode::remove() now runs in O(1) performance.

Standard

The file() flags error check is now about 7% faster.

SPL

RecursiveDirectoryIterator now performs less I/O when looping over a directory.

CLI

The STDOUT, STDERR and STDIN streams are no longer closed on resource destruction which is mostly when the CLI finishes. It is however still possible to explicitly close those streams using fclose() and similar.

Core

The strcmp(), strcasecmp(), strncmp(), strncasecmp(), and substr_compare() functions, using binary safe string comparison is no longer guaranteed to return strlen($string1) - strlen($string2) when string lengths are not equal, but may now return -1 or 1 instead. Instead of depending on any concrete value, the return value should be compared to 0.

DBA

dba_open() and dba_popen() now have the following enforced signature:

dba_fetch()'s optional skip argument is now at the end in line with PHP userland semantics. Its signature is now:

Random

random_bytes() and random_int() now throw a \Random\RandomException on CSPRNG failures. Previously a plain \Exception was thrown instead.

SPL

The iterator parameter of iterator_to_array() and iterator_count() is widened to iterable from Iterator, allowing arrays to be passed.

Date

The properties of DatePeriod are now properly declared.

Intl

Instances of IntlBreakIterator, IntlRuleBasedBreakIterator, IntlCodePointBreakIterator, IntlPartsIterator, IntlCalendar, Collator, IntlIterator, UConverter, IntlDateFormatter, IntlDatePatternGenerator, MessageFormatter, ResourceBundle, Spoofchecker, IntlTimeZone, and Transliterator are no longer serializable. Previously, they could be serialized, but unserialization yielded unusable objects or failed.

MySQLi

The support for libmysql has been removed and it is no longer possible to compile mysqli with libmysql. From now on, the mysqli extension can be compiled only with mysqlnd. All libmysql features unavailable in mysqlnd have been removed:

• The reconnect property of mysqli_driver
• The mysqli.reconnect INI directive
• The MYSQLI_IS_MARIADB constant has been deprecated

OCI8

The minimum Oracle Client library version required is now 11.2.

PCRE

NUL characters (\0) in pattern strings are now supported.

Session

Trying to change the session.cookie_samesite INI directive while the session is active or output has already been sent will now fail and emit a warning. This aligns the behaviour with all other session INI settings.

SQLite3

sqlite3.defensive is now INI_USER.

Standard

getimagesize() now reports the actual image dimensions, bits and channels of AVIF images. Previously, the dimensions have been reported as 0x0, and bits and channels have not been reported at all.

Tidy

The properties of the tidy class are now properly declared. And those of the tidyNode class are now properly declared as readonly.

Zip

The Zip extension has been updated to version 1.20.0, which adds the following methods:

• ZipArchive::clearError()
• ZipArchive::getStreamName()
• ZipArchive::getStreamIndex()

CLI

Using -a without the readline extension will now result in an error. Previously, -a without readline had the same behavior as calling php without any arguments, apart from printing an additional "Interactive mode enabled" message. This mode was not interactive.

PHPDBG

Remote functionality from phpdbg has been removed.

Core

The order of properties used in foreach, var_dump(), serialize(), object comparison, etc. was changed. Properties are now ordered naturally according to their declaration and inheritance. Properties declared in a base class are going to be before the child properties.

This order is consistent with internal layout of properties in zend_object structure and repeats the order in default_properties_table[] and properties_info_table[]. The old order was not documented and was caused by class inheritance implementation details.

Filter

The FILTER_FLAG_ALLOW_OCTAL flag of the FILTER_VALIDATE_INT filter now accept octal string with the leading octal prefix ("0o"/"0O").

GMP

All GMP functions now accept octal string with the leading octal prefix ("0o"/"0O").

PDO ODBC

PDO::getAttribute() with PDO::ATTR_SERVER_INFO and PDO::ATTR_SERVER_VERSION now return values instead of throwing PDOException.

Reflection

ReflectionProperty::setAccessible() and ReflectionMethod::setAccessible() no longer have an effect. Properties and methods are now always considered accessible via Reflection.

Standard

syslog() is now binary safe.

GD

imagewebp() can now do lossless WebP encoding by passing IMG_WEBP_LOSSLESS as the quality.

This constant is only defined, if the used libgd supports lossless WebP encoding.

MySQLi

mysqli_stmt::next_result() and mysqli::fetch_all() are now available when linking against libmysqlclient.

OpenSSL

• The OpenSSL extension now requires at least OpenSSL version 1.0.2.

• OpenSSL 3.0 is now supported. Be aware that many ciphers are no longer enabled by default (part of the legacy provider), and that parameter validation (e.g. minimum key sizes) is stricter now.

Phar

• SHA256 is now used by default for signatures.

• Added support for OpenSSL_SHA256 and OpenSSL_SHA512 signatures.

SNMP

• Added support for SHA256 and SHA512 for the security protocol.

Standard

--with-password-argon2 now uses pkg-config to detect libargon2. As such, an alternative libargon2 location should now be specified using PKG_CONFIG_PATH.

Apache2Handler

The PHP module has been renamed from php7_module to php_module.

Reflection

ReflectionClass::getConstants() and ReflectionClass::getReflectionConstants() results can be now filtered via a new parameter filter. Three new constants were added to be used with it:

• ReflectionClassConstant::IS_PUBLIC
• ReflectionClassConstant::IS_PROTECTED
• ReflectionClassConstant::IS_PRIVATE

Standard

The math functions abs(), ceil(), floor() and round() now properly heed the strict_types directive. Previously, they coerced the first argument even in strict type mode.

Zip

• The ZipArchive::addGlob() and ZipArchive::addPattern() methods accept more values in the options array argument:

  • flags
  • comp_method
  • comp_flags
  • env_method
  • enc_password

• ZipArchive::addEmptyDir(), ZipArchive::addFile() and ZipArchive::addFromString() methods have a new flags argument. This allows managing name encoding (ZipArchive::FL_ENC_*) and entry replacement (ZipArchive::FL_OVERWRITE).

• ZipArchive::extractTo() now restores the file modification time.

CURL

• The CURL extension now requires at least libcurl 7.29.0.

• The deprecated parameter version of curl_version() has been removed.

Date and Time

DatePeriod now implements IteratorAggregate (instead of Traversable).

DOM

DOMNamedNodeMap and DOMNodeList now implement IteratorAggregate (instead of Traversable).

Intl

IntlBreakIterator and ResourceBundle now implement IteratorAggregate (instead of Traversable).

Enchant

The enchant extension now uses libenchant-2 by default when available. libenchant version 1 is still supported but is deprecated and could be removed in the future.

GD

• The num_points parameter of imagepolygon(), imageopenpolygon() and imagefilledpolygon() is now optional, i.e. these functions may be called with either 3 or 4 arguments. If the argument is omitted, it is calculated as count($points)/2.

• The function imagegetinterpolation() to get the current interpolation method has been added.

JSON

The JSON extension cannot be disabled anymore and is always an integral part of any PHP build, similar to the date extension.

MBString

The Unicode data tables have been updated to version 13.0.0.

PDO

PDOStatement now implements IteratorAggregate (instead of Traversable).

LibXML

The minimum required libxml version is now 2.9.0. This means that external entity loading is now guaranteed to be disabled by default, and no extra steps need to be taken to protect against XXE attacks.

MySQLi / PDO MySQL

• When mysqlnd is not used (which is the default and recommended option), the minimum supported libmysqlclient version is now 5.5.

• mysqli_result now implements IteratorAggregate (instead of Traversable).

PGSQL / PDO PGSQL

The PGSQL and PDO PGSQL extensions now require at least libpq 9.1.

Readline

Calling readline_completion_function() before the interactive prompt starts (e.g. in auto_prepend_file) will now override the default interactive prompt completion function. Previously, readline_completion_function() only worked when called after starting the interactive prompt.

SimpleXML

SimpleXMLElement now implements RecursiveIterator and absorbed the functionality of SimpleXMLIterator. SimpleXMLIterator is an empty extension of SimpleXMLElement.

PHP Core

A specialized VM opcode for the array_key_exists() function has been added, which improves performance of this function if it can be statically resolved. In namespaced code, this may require writing \array_key_exists() or explicitly importing the function.

Regular Expressions (Perl-Compatible)

When preg_match() in UTF-8 mode ("u" modifier) is repeatedly called on the same string (but possibly different offsets), it will only be checked for UTF-8 validity once.

Set(raw)cookie accepts $option Argument

setcookie() and setrawcookie() now also support the following signature:

New Syslog ini Directives

The following ini Directives have been added to customize logging, if error_log is set to syslog:

syslog.facility

Specifies what type of program is logging the message.

syslog.filter

Specifies the filter type to filter the logged messages, with the supported filter types - all, no-ctrl and ascii. Starting with PHP 7.3.8, raw is also available, restoring the way syslog behaved in previous PHP versions. This filter will also affect calls to syslog().

syslog.ident

Specifies the ident string which is prepended to every message.

Garbage Collection

The cyclic GC has been enhanced, which may result in considerable performance improvements.

Miscellaneous

var_export() now exports stdClass objects as an array cast to an object ((object) array( ... )), rather than using the nonexistent method stdClass::__setState().

debug_zval_dump() was changed to display recursive arrays and objects in the same way as var_dump(). Now, it doesn't display them twice.

array_push() and array_unshift() can now also be called with a single argument, which is particularly convenient wrt. the spread operator.