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New features in PHP 8
Conversion Work
One of the major innovations in PHP is intended to give the scripting language a boost, but it does require some prior knowledge. As of version 5.5, the code to be executed has been stored in a cache provided by the OPcache extension [1]. Thanks to this cache, the interpreter does not have to reread the scripts for every request.
PHP 8 sees OPcache expanded to include a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. This converts parts of the PHP code into native program code, which the processor then executes directly and far faster as a consequence. As a further speed tweak, the generated binary code is also cached. When the PHP code is restarted, PHP 8 simply accesses the precompiled binary code from the cache.
As the first benchmarks by PHP developer Brent Roose show [2], scripts with repetitive or extensive calculations obviously benefit from these changes. When handling individual short requests, the JIT compiler shows its advantages to a far lesser extent.
Abbreviation
The syntax, which has changed slightly in some places in PHP 8, saves developers some typing. For example, the scripting language adds a more powerful and more compact match function to supplement switch. In Listing 1, $flasher is only On if $lever is set to Up or Down. If none of the comparison values before => are correct, the default value applies.
Listing 1
match
$flasher = match ($lever) {
0 => "Warning_Flasher",
'Up', 'Down' => "On",
default =>
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