PHP for Windows 5.3.0

PHP/FI started to get a lot of users, but things didn`t start flying until Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans suddenly came along with a new parser in the summer of 1997, leading to PHP 3.0. PHP 3.0 defined the syntax and semantics used in both versions 3 and 4.

The PHP development team is proud to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.3.0. This release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features and bug fixes.For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available here, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3.0. 

Major Features:

Some of the key new features include:

• Namespaces,
• Late static binding,
• Closures,
• Optional garbage collection for cyclic references,
• New extensions (like ext/phar, ext/intl and ext/fileinfo),
• Over 140 bug fixes and much more.

Enhancements:

• Upgraded bundled PCRE to version 7.9. (Nuno)
• Upgraded bundled sqlite to version 3.6.15. (Scott)
• Moved extensions to PECL (Derick, Lukas, Pierre, Scott)
• Removed the experimental RPL (master/slave) functions from mysqli. (Andrey)
• Removed zend.ze1_compatibility_mode. (Dmitry)
• Removed all zend_extension_* php.ini directives. Zend extensions are now always loaded using zend_extension directive. (Derick)
• Removed special treatment of "/tmp" in sessions for open_basedir. Note: This undocumented behaviour was introduced in 5.2.2. (Alexey)
• Removed shebang line check from CGI sapi (checked by scanner). (Dmitry)
• Changed PCRE, Reflection and SPL extensions to be always enabled. (Marcus)
• Changed md5() to use improved implementation. (Solar Designer, Dmitry)
• Changed HTTP stream wrapper to accept any code between and including 200 to 399 as successful. (Mike, Noah Fontes)
• Changed __call() to be invoked on private/protected method access, similar to properties and __get(). (Andrei)
• Changed dl() to be disabled by default. Enabled only when explicitly registered by the SAPI. Currently enabled with cli, cgi and embed SAPIs. (Dmitry)
• Changed opendir(), dir() and scandir() to use default context when no context argument is passed. (Sara)
• Changed open_basedir to allow tightening in runtime contexts. (Sara)
• Changed PHP/Zend extensions to use flexible build IDs. (Stas)
• Changed error level E_ERROR into E_WARNING in Soap extension methods parameter validation. (Felipe)
• Changed openssl info to show the shared library version number. (Scott)
• Changed floating point behaviour to consistently use double precision on all platforms and with all compilers. (Christian Seiler)
• Changed round() to act more intuitively when rounding to a certain precision and round very large and very small exponents correctly. (Christian Seiler)
• Changed session_start() to return false when session startup fails. (Jani)
• Changed property_exists() to check the existence of a property independent of accessibility (like method_exists()). (Felipe)
• Changed array_reduce() to allow mixed $initial (Christian Seiler)
• Improved PHP syntax and semantics
• Improved PHP runtime speed and memory usage
• Improved php.ini handling
• Improved Windows support
• Improved and cleaned CGI code
• Improved streams
• Added compatibility mode in GD, imagerotate, image(filled)ellipse imagefilter, imageconvolution and imagecolormatch are now always enabled. (Pierre)
• Added array_replace() and array_replace_recursive() functions. (Matt)
• Added ReflectionProperty:setAccessible() method that allows non-public property's values to be read through :getValue() and set through :setValue(). (Derick, Sebastian)
• Added msg_queue_exists() function to sysvmsg extension. (Benjamin Schulz)
• Added Firebird specific attributes that can be set via PDO:setAttribute() to control formatting of date/timestamp columns: PDO:FB_ATTR_DATE_FORMAT, PDO:FB_ATTR_TIME_FORMAT and PDO:FB_ATTR_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT. (Lars W)
• Added gmp_testbit() function. (Stas)
• Added icon format support to getimagesize(). (Scott)
• Added LDAP_OPT_NETWORK_TIMEOUT option for ldap_set_option() to allow setting network timeout (FR #42837). (Jani)
• Added optional escape character parameter to fgetcsv(). (David Soria Parra)
• Added an optional parameter to strstr() and stristr() for retrieval of either the part of haystack before or after first occurrence of needle. (Johannes, Felipe).