PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1 Released

[MrGrj]

The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1. This release marks the beginning of the PHP 7 major series. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.

THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!

PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1 comes with new version of the Zend Engine with features such as (incomplete list):

• Improved performance: PHP 7 is up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6
  
• Consistent 64-bit support
  
• Many fatal errors are now Exceptions
  
• Removal of old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions
  
• The null coalescing operator (??)
  
• Combined comparison Operator (<=>)
  
• Scalar Type Declarations
  
• Anonymous Classes
  

For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file or the or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive.

For source downloads of PHP 7.0.0 Alpha 1 please visit the download page, Windows binaries can be found on windows.php.net/qa/.

The second alpha will be released on 25th of June. You can also read the full list of planned releases on our wiki.

Thank you for helping us making PHP better.

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