What's new in PHP 7.3 (available to all Future Hosting customers)
- Ivan Ivanov
- Hosting Industry
From February 2019, web hosting users at Future Hosting can use PHP 7.3 for their web site. In this way, we enable customers to take advantage of the innovations and useful features that will make their site more optimized and secure. Moving to the latest version of the scripting language will not harm the site's work, and any of our clients can do so by following the steps to update the PHP version or by contacting our Technical Support for further assistance.
WHAT'S NEW IN PHP VERSION 7.3?
It looks like the new version of PHP gives more flexibility and job opportunities and comes with some long-awaited and significant changes:
- Flexible Heredoc and Nowdoc syntax - Allows adding long strings without the need to add newline characters. This makes the code easier to read and understand. This functionality was also available in previous versions of
- Less stringent syntax - After the latest update, developers are relieved of the syntax errors that are often accepted. Among the most common flaws, there is usually a comma or colon in more or less in the script. In this case, detecting an error can become a nightmare for any developer. Fortunately, with PHP 7.3, some of the so-called "wrong" commands are tolerated (e.g., adding a comma in the last line of the script).
- JSON_THROW_ON__ERROR - Another of the new features provides a different way to handle JSON errors. So far, developers have been finding it difficult to make a mistake because they were not notified of it. With PHP 7.3, there will be a change in the way these errors will be handled.
The complete list of improvements and bug fixes in PHP 7.3 can be found on the Github platform, where developers publish any changes made to the files.
DO YOU USE YOUR OLD VERSIONS OF PHP?
73% of PHP users still rely on version 5. It's good to know that after the end of 2018, all sites using PHP 5 have become vulnerable to cyber attacks because they no longer receive security updates.