PHP 5.3 alpha1 released!

The PHP development team is proud to announce the first alpha release (Windows binaries will appear in the next few days) of the upcoming minor version update of PHP. The new version PHP 5.3 is expected to improve stability and performance as well as add new language syntax and extensions. Several new features have already been documented in the official documentation, others are listed on the wiki in preparation of getting documented. Please also review the NEWS file.

There have been a great number of other additions and improvements, but here is a short overview of the most important changes:

* Namespaces (documentation maybe out dated)

* Late static binding and __callStatic

* Lambda functions and closures

* Addition of the intl, phar (phar is scheduled for some more work a head of
alpha2), fileinfo and sqlite3 extensions

* Optional cyclic garbage collection

* Optional support for the MySQLnd replacement driver for libmysql

* Windows older than Windows 2000 (Windows 98, NT4, etc.) are not supported anymore
(details)

* New syntax features like NOWDOC, limited GOTO, ternary short cut "?:"

(more...)