The latest version of PHP can be downloaded from Softpedia

Aug 28, 2014 18:01 GMT  ·  By

PHP 5.6, an HTML-embedded scripting language with syntax borrowed from C, Java, and Perl, with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in, is now available for download.

The PHP 5.x branch includes a new OOP model based on the Zend Engine, a new extension for improved MySQL support, built-in native support for SQLite, and many more features. This branch of PHP has been in the works for quite some time and it's nice to see that the stable version is now out.

According to the changelog, constant scalar expressions syntax has been added, a dedicated syntax for variadic functions has been implemented, support has been added for argument unpacking to complement the variadic syntax, an exponentiation operator (**) is now available, phpdbg SAPI has been added, and unified default encoding has been implemented.

Also, a function for timing attack safe string comparison has been added, uploads equal or greater than 2GB in size are now accepted, stream wrappers verify peer certificates and host names by default in encrypted client streams, and numerous changes and bug fixes have been implemented as well.

You can check out the changelog in the readme file incorporated in the source package for more details about this release or on the official website. You can download PHP 5.6 right now from Softpedia.