What is new in PHP 7.3?

At Smarthost.eu hosting you can use the latest version of PHP 7.3. In each account, you can choose version of PHP 7.3, as one of the many PHP version that we provide. The PHP version can be set for each domain separately, which means that you can conveniently test the latest PHP versions.

Let’s take a look at what’s new for the users and whether it’s worth starting to use it immediately or maybe it’s better to wait.

Below are the major changes compared to the previous version of PHP.

  • Introduction of the flexible HEREDOC / NOWDOC syntax
  • Inserting a comma after the last argument in function / method calls
  • Support of references in the list()
  • Adding the JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR flag
  • New function is_countable()
  • Adding new functions: array_key_first / last and array_value_first / last
  • New password hashing function – Argon2id
  • Adding the timer hrtime()
  • Implementation of the new CompileError error type

and many minor changes and improvements.

In addition, many features in version 7.3 have been marked as obsolete and will be removed in subsequent versions.

The increase in speed after changing the version to 7.3 will be up to a dozen or so percent compared to 7.2, and a few hundred percent up to version 5.x.

So using the 5.x version, users will feel a bigger difference after changing PHP to 7.3, while moving from version 7.2, the speed increase will not be so significant. We encourage you to check our performance tests showing the speed of scripting relative to individual PHP versions.

Security issues should also be taken into account, moving from a version not supported, including 5.6 or 7.0 increase the security of your website by continually getting the latest updates, which will take place for the PHP 7.3 version.

So if the application is prepared for PHP 7.3 version, it is worth changing the PHP version in cPanel.

Michał
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