RFC Tracker

Adds an opt-in mode where unqualified function and constant names stop falling back to the global namespace.

Adds grapheme_mask() for masking sensitive data safely in multibyte and emoji-heavy strings.

Lets a class declare constructor parameters in its header, lifting property promotion out of __construct().

Adds friend classes that may access another class's protected members.

An official, rolling php-community release that ships experimental features ahead of regular PHP versions.

Prevents instantiating and cloning the internal __PHP_Incomplete_Class.

Adds a readonly modifier for local variables, so reassigning one after its first assignment throws an error.

Deprecates lossy casts like (int) "123abc" ahead of a TypeError in PHP 9, and lets strict mode accept Stringable for string parameters.

Adds a native values() method to backed enums that returns every backing value in declaration order, unless the enum defines its own.

Adds an Encoding namespace with full RFC 4648 Base16, Base32 and Base64 support, plus Base58 and Base85.

Adds (?type) casts that let null pass through and (!type) casts that reject null, both throwing on malformed input like "123abc".

Adds a #[\NonExhaustive] attribute that marks an enum as likely to gain cases, so code matching on it knows to handle unknown ones.

Adds a #[\NotSerializable] attribute that makes the engine refuse to serialize() or unserialize() instances of a class.

Adds BLAKE3 to ext/hash, so hash('blake3', ...) and hash_hmac() can use it.

Lets __sleep() return null or nothing, so it runs as a pre-serialization hook and the engine then serializes the object as usual.

Scopes extension methods so they are only visible where they are imported with use extension.

Lets code add methods to existing classes and interfaces from outside their definition, Swift-style.

Adds FILTER_VALIDATE_STRLEN to validate string length in UTF-8 code points.

Extends extension methods to built-in types like string, int and array.

Adds a SORT_STRICT flag to sort(), ksort(), array_unique() and friends that orders values by type first, with no type juggling.