PHP 8.4: First release candidate provides insights into the final version

The first release candidate for the upcoming version 8.4 is available for the PHP programming language. It offers insights into the upcoming new functionality and serves as a test version before the final release, scheduled for November 21st.

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The innovations include, among other things, optimizations in the BcMath extension and the new curl option CURLOPT_DEBUGFUNCTIONnumerous fixes in DOM, MBString and Opcache, as well as additional methods in the Reflection API. The update aims to increase the performance and stability of the programming language.

BcMath and Curl

In the area of ​​BcMath (Binary Calculator Mathematics) – a PHP extension that provides functions for the exact calculation of large numbers and decimal numbers – the development team has made performance optimizations to the function bcpow() and added a check for scale overflow. With the new function bcdivmod the quotient and the remainder of a division can be calculated at the same time. The development team also addressed an issue that apparently prevented objects from being converted into strings during operator calculations.

PHP 8.4 RC 1 integrates the option CURLOPT_DEBUGFUNCTION for the curl extension, which provides enhanced debugging capabilities. In the area of ​​debugging, the upcoming version eliminates an error in interaction with the debugging tool GDB, which… TypeError-Exception caused.

DOM and MBString extension

The DOM extension underwent several fixes. The developers behind the programming language have ensured that the serialization of xmlns="" is now apparently being treated correctly. Also they have an assertion flaw in ext/dom/element.c and fixed an issue with resetting DOM properties.

According to the release notes, there was a bug in the MBString extension mb_detect_encoding()which contained an invalid encoding “UTF8”. The update updates the Unicode data tables to Unicode 16, allowing better support for newer characters.

Opcache and PHPDBG

Opcache is receiving important updates, including fixing a segmentation fault and introducing the feature opcache_jit_blacklist()which excludes certain functionality from just-in-time (JIT) compilation. In the PHPDBG extension, the development team fixed an assertion bug and corrected use-after-free issues in the PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) library. UAF issues are a type of security vulnerability that can occur in software when a program continues to access it after a memory area has been freed.

In addition to the innovations mentioned, the release includes further optimizations in the PDO_PGSQL extension, additional methods in the Reflection API, error corrections in SimpleXML and SOAP, as well as revisions in the areas of SPL, streams, TSRM and Windows support.
More information about the first release candidate for PHP 8.4 can be found in the release notes on GitHub.

(mdo)