The start of November is big news for users and developers of PHP applications with the release of PHP 5.2 on the 2nd of the month. According to the release announcement, this "release is a major improvement in the 5.X series, which includes a large number of new features, bug fixes and security enhancements".
Significant features of PHP 5.2 include:
- New memory manager for the Zend Engine with improved performance and a more accurate memory usage tracking.
- Input filtering extension was added and enabled by default.
- JSON extension was added and enabled by default.
- ZIP extension for creating and editing zip files was introduced.
- Hooks for tracking file upload progress were introduced.
- Introduced E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR error mode.
- Introduced DateTime and DateTimeZone objects with methods to manipulate date/time information.
- Upgraded bundled SQLite, PCRE libraries.
- Upgraded OpenSSL, MySQL and PostgreSQL client libraries for Windows installations.
- Many performance improvements.
- Over 200 bug fixes.
For those interested in PHP 5.2, please see the original release announcement for a better listing of the security enhancements as well as links for those needing to modify their content management systems to work with PHP 5.2.