1. 1st difference is name i.e PHP7. The stable release PHP5x version is PHP5.6 After some dispute the development team decided they would omit the PHP6 name for next major release.PHP 6 already existed in the past as an experimental project but never reached the production phase.
2. PHP7 receives a brand new version of the Zend engine coming under the code name PHP#NG(Next Generation). PHP5 uses Zend Engine II.
3. The biggest change in PHP7 is speed.By using PHP 7 not only your code will be executed faster but you will also need fewer servers to serve the same amount of users.
4. Error handling. To say the least, handling fatal and catchable fatal errors have never been an easy task for PHP coders. The new Engine Exceptions will allow you to replace this kind of errors with exceptions. If the exception is not caught, PHP will continue to return the same fatal errors as it does in the current 5.X series.
5. 64-bit windows system support. PHP 7 will change this as it introduces consistent 64-bit support which means both native 64-bit integers and large files will be supported.5.X series don’t yet provide 64-bit integer or large file support, so until now x64 builds have been considered experimental.
6. New Spaceship(<=>) and Null Coalescing Operators(??)
The Spaceship operator runs under the official name of Combined Comparison Operator.
The spaceship operator returns 0 if both operands are equal, 1 if the left is greater, and -1 if the right is greater. It’s also called a three-way comparison operator.
The Null Coalescing operator uses when you want to check if something exists and return a default value, in case it doesn’t. The coalesce operator returns the result of its first operand if it exists and is not null, and the second operand in any other cases.
ex. PHP5 :- $userid=isset($_GET['id'])?$_GET['id']:'null';
PHP7:- $userid=$_GET['id'] ?? 'null';
7. Enables Accurate Type Declarations
The new PHP 7 enables developers to enhance the quality of their code with the help of return type declarations.PHP 7 introduces 4 new type declarations for scalar types: int, float, string and bool
8. Adds Anonymous Classes
The syntax is the same as what we are used to in traditional PHP classes, only the name is missing. If anonymous classes are used well, they can speed up coding as well execution time.
2. PHP7 receives a brand new version of the Zend engine coming under the code name PHP#NG(Next Generation). PHP5 uses Zend Engine II.
3. The biggest change in PHP7 is speed.By using PHP 7 not only your code will be executed faster but you will also need fewer servers to serve the same amount of users.
4. Error handling. To say the least, handling fatal and catchable fatal errors have never been an easy task for PHP coders. The new Engine Exceptions will allow you to replace this kind of errors with exceptions. If the exception is not caught, PHP will continue to return the same fatal errors as it does in the current 5.X series.
5. 64-bit windows system support. PHP 7 will change this as it introduces consistent 64-bit support which means both native 64-bit integers and large files will be supported.5.X series don’t yet provide 64-bit integer or large file support, so until now x64 builds have been considered experimental.
6. New Spaceship(<=>) and Null Coalescing Operators(??)
The Spaceship operator runs under the official name of Combined Comparison Operator.
The spaceship operator returns 0 if both operands are equal, 1 if the left is greater, and -1 if the right is greater. It’s also called a three-way comparison operator.
The Null Coalescing operator uses when you want to check if something exists and return a default value, in case it doesn’t. The coalesce operator returns the result of its first operand if it exists and is not null, and the second operand in any other cases.
ex. PHP5 :- $userid=isset($_GET['id'])?$_GET['id']:'null';
PHP7:- $userid=$_GET['id'] ?? 'null';
7. Enables Accurate Type Declarations
The new PHP 7 enables developers to enhance the quality of their code with the help of return type declarations.PHP 7 introduces 4 new type declarations for scalar types: int, float, string and bool
8. Adds Anonymous Classes
The syntax is the same as what we are used to in traditional PHP classes, only the name is missing. If anonymous classes are used well, they can speed up coding as well execution time.
