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PHP Core Roundup #7
Published on November 7, 2022 by Roman Pronskiy
Welcome to the seventh in the PHP Core Roundup series, where we summarize the latest improvements, bug fixes, proposals, and other developments in PHP.

We are merely three weeks away from PHP 8.2 GA release, and we already have changes implemented and being discussed for the next PHP version, PHP 8.3! Exciting times!

First PHP 8.3 Changes Implemented!


PHP 8.3 is more than a year away, but the first change for PHP 8.3 is already merged into the master branch.

Juan Carlos Moralesโ€™s RFC to add a new json_validate() function to PHP was voted on and is already implemented. The new json_validate() function returns whether a given JSON string is valid or not, without consuming the memory and processing it takes to decode a JSON string. For quick JSON string validations, json_validate() can come in handy.

Additionally, Tim Dรผsterhusโ€™s RFC to improve error handling semantics of the unserialize() function recently finished the vote.

There are quite a few more RFCs under discussion that target PHP 8.3, so itโ€™s safe to say that the PHP 8.3 development is quite active even before we have the first GA PHP 8.2 release!


PHP 8.2 GA to be released this month!


The first GA PHP version, PHP 8.2.0, is scheduled to be released on the 24th of November. PHP 8.2 RC5 is already released, and RC6 (the last one) is scheduled for the 10th of November.

PHP 8.2 RC versions are available in Ondrej Suryโ€™s Debian/Ubuntu repos, Remiโ€™s repos for Fedora/RHEL, Docker images on Docker Hub, and compiled Windows binaries on windows.php.net.

All PHP 7 Versions Reach EOL Next Month

PHP 7โ€™s journey comes to an end when PHP 8.2 is released. PHP 7.0 through 7.3 are no longer maintained and no longer receive security updates, but PHP 7.4 is currently receiving security updates from the PHP core developers.


Recent RFCs, Merged PRs, Discussions, and Commits


Changes and improvements to PHP are discussed, reported, and voted on by the PHP Foundation Team, the PHP development team, and contributors. Bug reports are made to the PHP issue tracker, changes are discussed in mailing lists, minor code changes are proposed as pull requests, and major changes are discussed in detail and voted on as PHP RFCs. Documentation and the php.net web site changes are also discussed and improved at their relevant Git repositories on GitHub.

Hundreds of awesome PHP contributors put effort into improving the PHP code base, documentation, and the php.net website. Here is a summary of some changes made by the people behind PHP. Things marked with ๐Ÿ’œ are done by the PHP Foundation team.


RFC Updates

Following are the RFCs and major pull-requests discussed, voted, and implemented since our last update.

RFC Implemented: json_validate
RFC by Juan Carlos Morales, to add a new json_validate() function that returns whether the given string of JSON is a valid JSON. This RFCโ€™s vote passed, and is now implemented in PHP 8.3.

There is a polyfill proposed to Symfony polyfills, and more information on PHP.Watch: json_validate().


RFC Pending Implementation: Improve unserialize() error handling
RFC by Tim Dรผsterhus completed its vote, and is pending implementation. It proposed to improve error handling of the unserialize function by increasing the error level from E_NOTICE to E_WARNING, adding a new 'UnserializationFailedException' exception, and throwing exceptions on error conditions.

The vote was not in favor of adding the new 'UnserializationFailedException' exception type, but the vote to promote notices to warnings was in favor, and is currently pending implementation.

More information on PHP.Watch: unserialize(): Upgrade E_NOTICE errors to E_WARNING.


RFC Under Discussion: Destructuring Coalesce
Bob Weinand created a new RFC and a discussion on allowing [$a ?? $b] = $array;, where $a is assigned $b if the key in the array is null or missing:

[$a ?? $b] = $array;
[$a ?? "default value"] = $array;

Currently, the snippets above result in Parse Error. The RFC proposes adding support for coalesce in array destructing (list() function calls, or [$a, $b, โ€ฆ] = $array syntax).

When destructing an array, the $a will be assigned $b/"default value" if $array[0] is not set.


RFC Under Discussion: Randomizer Additions
RFC by Joshua Rรผsweg and Tim Dรผsterhus, proposes to add new โ€œbuilding blockโ€ methods to \Random\Randomizer that implement commonly useful operations that are either verbose or very hard to implement in userland. It proposes to add getBytesFromString(), nextFloat(), and getFloat() methods to the new \Random\Randomizer classes added as part of the Random Extension RFC.


RFC Under Discussion: Dynamic class constant fetch ๐Ÿ’œ
In this RFC, Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ proposes to allow fetching class constants and magic constants dynamically.

class Foo {
    const BAR = 'bar';
}

$bar = 'BAR';

// This is currently a syntax error
echo Foo::{$bar};

Currently, accessing class constants dynamically has to be done with a constant() function call:
echo constant(Foo::class . '::' . $bar);

This RFC proposes to allow the syntax shown in the snippet above, which is apparently only an arbitrary limitation and not a technical limitation.



Notable Mailing List Discussions



Merged PRs and Commits


Following are some changes that did not go through an RFC process because they are either planned, bug fixes, or progressive enhancements. There are automated unit and integration tests for each of these changes, the PHP core developers review all pull requests.
  • Fix invalid label before } in GH-9624 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix PHP-8.0 skipping for some jobs in 958955e62a by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Skip some OCI tests with repeat in 93e509fd8c by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix PHP-8.0 skipping for community steps in 03a48b1209 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • And also update the branch ref in f518ae50aa by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Skip Symfony preloading for PHP-8.0 in f49709a544 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Updated to timelib version 2022.6 in d16b5d3803, 2b5bed904e, and 24963be8ef by Derick Rethans ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Keep original EG(jit_trace_num) value around __autoload() in f7d0a3e0e0 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Force exit to VM in aa179bf3dd by Dmitry Stogov
  • Replace reallocarray with safe_perealloc in 138fd5b3c8 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Improve CS in FPM Tester Response in 1ed4303957 by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Do not check X-Powered-By header in FPM tester if expose_php off in GH-9508 by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix php_init_crypt_r/php_shutdown_crypt_r signatures warning in 257f108924 by David Carlier
  • Add missing CVEs in b0cc5ed91f and 12c3636d01 by Remi Collet
  • Add support for binary and octal number prefixes for INI settings in GH-9560 by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix UPGRADING by adding DBA constants in a8d6ca4ef1 by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Move object/class redundancy check into union type handling in 74ae498a4b by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix GH-9556 iterable alias array|Traversable breaks PHP 8.1 code in GH-9558 by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Make socket path shorter for ext/sockets/tests/socket_cmsg_{rights|credentials}.phpt in c58241a003 by Andy Postnikov
  • Return immediately when FD_SETSIZE is exceeded in GH-9602 by Arnaud Le Blanc ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Use --EXTENSIONS-- section for newly added tests in 47c79a97f5 by Christoph M. Becker
  • gh9590.phpt requires ext/posix in 48ae3a0e3f by Christoph M. Becker
  • Fix GH-9655: Allow pure intersection types to be implicitly nullable in GH-9659 by HypeMC
  • Fix abstract trace consisency for FE_FETCH instruction in 5ca4113386 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Fix GH-9626: JIT type assertion failure in Symfony community build in ec5882e1c3 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Fix register allocation (missing store) in ed652a514f by Dmitry Stogov
  • Follow-up fix for GH-9655 in 01eb06a0de by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Restore backwards-compatible mappings of U+005C and U+007E to SJIS-2004 in dd00e2f1e3 by Alex Dowad
  • Fix typo in 072dc3c857 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Remove support for libmysql-client from mysqli test suite in GH-9652 by Christoph M. Becker
  • Fix memory-leak in CLI web server in GH-9680 by Benoit Viguier
  • Reduce scope of r in rand_rangeXX in GH-9678 by Tim Dรผsterhus
  • Actually fix GH-9583 in GH-9638 by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Add empty default params to nightly linux matrix in 26499f53fb by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Prepare for Windows CI with Github Actions in b43e49437c by Michael Voล™รญลกek
  • Fix GH-9697: array_walk($ffiInstance, function () {}) crashes due to expecting mutable array in d9651a9419 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Generate constant declarations with the CONST_CS flag for PHP 7.x in 69ef3247fd by Mรกtรฉ Kocsis ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Increase job timeout for ASAN/UBSAN build in 2c8f2e9349 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix GH-9566: disable assembly for Fiber on FreeBSD i386 in be53e5e5bb by David Carlier
  • Fix GH-9589: dl() segfaults when module is already loaded in GH-9689 by Christoph M. Becker
  • In legacy text conversion filters, reset filter state in 'flush' function in 5812b4fe54 by Alex Dowad
  • Add regression test for problem with mb_encode_mimeheader reported as GH-9683 in faa5425b0f by Alex Dowad
  • Ensure driver specific PDO methods have a proper run_time_cache in 9be00e3935 by Bob Weinand
  • Fix crashes after opcache restart in c5364b851a by Dmitry Stogov
  • Fix GH-9653: does not inconditionally support copy_file_range on older kernels in c15fe51918 by David Carlier
  • Fix potential heap corruption due to alignment mismatch in GH-9724 by Christoph M. Becker
  • Fix GH-9720: Null pointer dereference while serializing the response in GH-9739 by Christoph M. Becker
  • Restore extra_named_params when restoring frozen call stack in 86e1fea39a by Arnaud Le Blanc ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Update to actions/checkout@v3 in GH-9759 by Tim Dรผsterhus
  • Update to actions/checkout@v3 (PHP-8.1) in 8cd1b837c1 by Tim Dรผsterhus
  • Discard disasm symbols on opcache restart in cefb228e15 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Reset JIT for dynamic functions on opcache restrart in 61e563ca40 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Fix memory leak in eecbb60db6 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Fixed GH-9763: DateTimeZone ctr mishandles input and adds null byte if the argument is an offset larger than 100*60 minutes in 7b48053293 by Derick Rethans ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Update NEWS in 41a6a298d9 by Derick Rethans ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix GH-9372: HY010 when binding overlong parameter in GH-9541 by Christoph M. Becker
  • Test for bug #78055 (DatePeriod's getRecurrences and ->recurrences don't match) in 011b7f9840 by Derick Rethans ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix failing date test in 4e8a6554cb by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix cli server blocking on accept when using multiple workers in GH-9693 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Add FrankenPHP to the allow list of opcache in 7acb7703e2 by Kรฉvin Dunglas
  • Fix bug #81738 (buffer overflow in hash_update() on long parameter) in 248f647724 by Stanislav Malyshev
  • Revert incorrect PHP-7.4 version constants in 8b919c3175 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix crash when memory limit is exceeded during generator initialization in 26c7c82d32 by Arnaud Le Blanc ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix compilation warning in 994097093c by Benoit
  • Clean up OpenSSL engine list when OpenSSL 1.0.2 used in 1ef65c1cf0 by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix GH-8430: OpenSSL compiled with old disgests does not build in fa1b6ab5db by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fixed missing run_time_cache for preloaded arena allocated internal functions in 5e9654be03 by Bob Weinand
  • Fix OpenSSL conflicting merge for compilation issue with old digests in 3e2184f795 by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix GH-9709: Guard against current_execute_data==NULL in is_handle_exception_set in 45e224cf51 by Adam Saponara
  • Fix bug GH-9779: stream_copy_to_stream fail when dest in append mode in b732d80329 by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix #81739: OOB read due to insufficient validation in imageloadfont() in d50532be91 by Christoph M. Becker
  • Update NEWS in 2669ed7d77 by Stanislav Malyshev
  • JIT: Fix incorrect EX(opline) override in 261a08af65 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Fixed test in e0d9a29958 by Dmitry Stogov
  • Convert Implicitly nullable pure intersection types to DNF in 0b0259a418 by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Revert 01eb06a0 in 8c2df899d0 by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Update new test to use EXTENSIONS section instead of SKIPIF in b4fb66463b by Christoph M. Becker
  • Fix OpCache build after 0b0259a4 in cb3adf351d by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • opcache: fix syntax error introduced in 261a08af in GH-9821 by Kรฉvin Dunglas
  • Fix user path in test in 537a104f14 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Initialize run time cache in PDO methods in GH-9818 by Florian Sowade
  • Donโ€™t report arginfo violations on fake closures in GH-9823 by Florian Sowade
  • move CVEs in 8.0.25 changelog in db28ee8fd0 by Remi Collet
  • move CVEs in 8.1.12 changelog in c84d7cc27e by Remi Collet
  • Remove unnecessary ast eval bailout in GH-9805 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Add missing EXTENSION section to tests in a4acba9e52 by George Peter Banyard ๐Ÿ’œ
  • mysqli_query throws warning despite using silenced error mode in GH-9842 by Kamil Tekiela
  • Add a temporary fix for insufficient buffer size in mysqlnd in GH-9835 by Kamil Tekiela
  • Add NEWS entry for #9841 in GH-9841 by Kamil Tekiela
  • Add NEWS entry for #9841 in bce12f4e57 by Kamil Tekiela
  • Fix pre-PHP 8.2 compatibility for php_mt_rand_range() with MT_RAND_PHP in GH-9839 by Tim Dรผsterhus
  • Fix GH-9754: SaltStack hangs when running php-fpm 8.1.11 in 1c5844aa3e by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Do not display the value of UNKNOWN constants in the manual in GH-9843 by Mรกtรฉ Kocsis ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix GH-9770: Add small timeout in status-listen test in 8229649045 by Jakub Zelenka ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix memory leak in 482ae71fda by Dmitry Stogov
  • Bumb versions in 004cb82750 by Derick Rethans ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Donโ€™t reset func in zend_closure_internal_handler in 8dabbda8bc by Florian Sowade
  • Fix GH-9829: Bug in refactoring Windows shmat() function in GH-9873 by Christoph M. Becker
  • Fix potential NULL pointer dereference Windows shm*() functions in GH-9872 by Christoph M. Becker
  • Fix observing inherited internal functions in b30448f48f by Bob Weinand
  • Fix hardcoded paths in test in 4935e10fc8 by Bob Weinand
  • Delay releasing closures until after observer end in 8e49d7f32f by Bob Weinand
  • Properly deal with internal attributes used on promoted properties in GH-9661 by Martin Schrรถder
  • Fix fake closure leaking when called from internal func in GH-9884 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Migrate i386 to GitHub actions in GH-9856 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix duplicate SKIPIF section in d2c663441d by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix ext section in bca1e1f557 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Really fix test this time in 35167af771 by Ilija Tovilo ๐Ÿ’œ
  • Fix generator memory leaks when interrupted during argument evaluation in GH-9756 by Arnaud Le Blanc ๐Ÿ’œ


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