PHP5 VS PHP6

PHP is actually a set of extensions that are bundled together in order to make what we currently have, these extensions can be changed. Let’s take for example the XML Writer extension. It is best extension for writing the XML files. A similar extension, XML Reader, has already been attached and allowed in the essential distribution in PHP 5.1, and currently XML Writer will use its model in PHP 6, making an excellent couple in order to work easily with XML files.

Another modification in the essential distribution is the exclusion of the ereg frequent expressions library that is going to become an extension. ereg is now used as a competitor of PCRE (preg_match, etc.), but it seems to cause some problems. Consequently, the experts have made the decision to take it out of the core and change it into an extension.

Now, media type detection is not quite good in PHP. There is mime_magic extension, which is not quite useful. Thus in PHP 6, the Fileinfo extension will replace mime_magic and it will be integrated in the core while mime_magic will be taken out of the core and changed into extension.

These changes seem to be really interesting. You can conclude that PHP 6 is not really a huge characteristics upgrade, but it is more a great cleanup based on optimizing a lot of functions which already exist, on the move. There are professionals working with PHP almost every day and they can notice improvements every moment.