Looking forward to the next larger release of the PHP language - PHP 7.3 - Ayesh Karunaratne has written up a post on his site sharing some of the new things that are coming and changes that will be made.

This is a live document (until PHP 7.3 is released as generally available) on changes and new features to expect in PHP 7.3, with code examples, relevant RFCs, and the rationale behind them, in their chronological order.

Currently there are five items on his list of features/changes approved and implemented for the 7.3 release:

• Heredoc and Nowdoc syntax requirements are more relaxed
• Allow trailing comma in function and method calls
• Option to make json_encode and json_decode throw exceptions on errors
• References in list()
• Introduced is_countable() function

While each item is a link to the actual RFC with more detail, he spends the rest of the post going through each and briefly outlining what they offer and code examples of them in use.

A changing of the guard has taken place with the launch of the new branch of PHP - 5.3. Ilia Alshanetsky is no longer the release manager, instead Johannes Schlüter will be taking the lead.

From Ilia:

As per our tradition of changing Release Masters for every minor release, a new masochist, ;-) Johannes Schlüter will be taking of the role of RM for PHP 5.3 from me. I will continue to RM 5.2.X release, which has 1-2 releases in it still and will be actively maintained up until 5.3.0 is released into the wild, something that should happen early next year.

Ilia is stepping down after two years of service as release manager and, while sad to move on, is happy to see "new blood" move into the project to liven things up.

Check out Manfred Weber's comments on the change too.

A changing of the guard has taken place with the launch of the new branch of PHP - 5.3. Ilia Alshanetsky is no longer the release manager, instead Johannes Schlüter will be taking the lead.

From Ilia:

As per our tradition of changing Release Masters for every minor release, a new masochist, ;-) Johannes Schlüter will be taking of the role of RM for PHP 5.3 from me. I will continue to RM 5.2.X release, which has 1-2 releases in it still and will be actively maintained up until 5.3.0 is released into the wild, something that should happen early next year.

Ilia is stepping down after two years of service as release manager and, while sad to move on, is happy to see "new blood" move into the project to liven things up.

Check out Manfred Weber's comments on the change too.