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PHP 5.4 Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

mikejuk writes "PHP 5.4 has been released, along with a new version of Zend Framework. It has a number of optimizations that make it faster and smaller (early estimates say 10-20% faster), a built-in webserver for testing purposes, and features that had been destined for PHP 6.0. The big addition from the now-crashed PHP 6.0 project is Traits, which are sort of a cross between a class and an interface, bringing some of the advantages of multiple inheritance to PHP. The full changelog and download page are both available."

3 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Re:advantages of multiple inheritance by bieber · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Multiple inheritance is supported in some form or another in just about every OO language in existence. It's just that most prefer to restrict multiply-inherited traits to methods and call them "interfaces" instead of "base classes." IMO, that's entirely unnecessary. If I want an "interface" in C++, then I write a pure abstract class without any member variables and use it the same way I'd use an interface in Java. If I want true multiple inheritance in Java, I'm just out of luck. MI can be used in some very nasty ways, but if you tried to remove each and every feature that a programmer could possibly misuse from a language you'd pretty quickly find yourself with an insanely verbose toy language that no experienced developer would ever want to touch.

  2. Saying "PHP 5.4 Released" isn't that meaningful... by bogaboga · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Telling us readers how it (the new PHP) measures up to the competition would have been better and more informative.

    So, let me bite: How does this new release measure up to the competition?

  3. Re:advantages of multiple inheritance by buchner.johannes · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Multiple inheritance is supported in some form or another in just about every OO language in existence. It's just that most prefer to restrict multiply-inherited traits to methods and call them "interfaces" instead of "base classes." IMO, that's entirely unnecessary. If I want an "interface" in C++, then I write a pure abstract class without any member variables and use it the same way I'd use an interface in Java. If I want true multiple inheritance in Java, I'm just out of luck. MI can be used in some very nasty ways, but if you tried to remove each and every feature that a programmer could possibly misuse from a language you'd pretty quickly find yourself with an insanely verbose toy language that no experienced developer would ever want to touch.

    I disagree: Taking away options in the language can make the outcome better. For instance, you *have* to strongly type in Java, and you *have* to put everything in classes. Surely its safe to say that Java tends to be more modular by default.
    If you take away the update operator, you end up in the wonderful world of side-effect-free programming, that the compiler also can take advantage of.

    I have yet to see an example where MI is the best solution in a real e.g. Java program.

    --
    NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.