1. PHP6: The Story Behind Its Disappearance
When it comes to PHP versions, many people have noticed that there is a huge leap from PHP 5 to PHP 7. So, what happened to PHP 6? Why did it never see the light of day? In this article, we will uncover the story behind the disappearance of PHP 6 and the reasons behind it.
1.1. The Background
In the mid-2000s, the development of PHP 6 began with the aim of introducing significant improvements and new features to the language. The main focus was on providing better Unicode support, addressing internationalization issues, and enhancing performance. However, as the development progressed, it became clear that there were major challenges ahead.
1.2. The Unicode Problem
One of the main reasons behind the abandonment of PHP 6 was the way Unicode support was implemented. Initially, the development team decided to adopt the ICU (International Components for Unicode) library, which provides comprehensive Unicode support. However, this approach proved to be problematic.
As PHP is a widely adopted language with a large existing codebase, this decision caused significant compatibility issues. Many PHP scripts were not designed to handle Unicode properly, and the introduction of PHP 6's Unicode support would have required significant changes to existing code.
// Example of Unicode support in PHP 6
$unicode_string = "こんにちは";
echo $unicode_string;
1.3. The Performance Problem
Another major hurdle that PHP 6 faced was performance. As the development progressed, it became evident that the implementation of Unicode support was causing a noticeable slowdown in PHP's performance. This was mainly due to the complexity and overhead of handling Unicode strings.
In order to achieve better performance, the development team would have needed to invest a considerable amount of time and effort in optimizing PHP's internal processes. The performance issues, combined with the compatibility problems, raised concerns about the viability of PHP 6 as a successor to PHP 5.
2. The Birth of PHP 7
Given the difficulties encountered during the development of PHP 6, the PHP community decided to take a different approach. Instead of continuing with PHP 6 and trying to fix the existing problems, they decided to start afresh with PHP 7.
2.1. The PHPNG Project
To address the performance issues plaguing PHP 6, the PHP community launched the PHPNG (PHP Next-Generation) project. The main objective of this project was to improve the performance of PHP by reengineering the Zend Engine, which is the core of PHP's execution engine.
// Example of performance improvements in PHP 7
$name = "John";
$is_registered = true;
echo "{$name} is " . ($is_registered ? "registered" : "not registered");
2.2. The Successor to PHP 5
With the PHPNG project gaining momentum, it became clear that it was the way forward. The decision was made to skip PHP 6 altogether and jump straight to PHP 7. This was not only to avoid the issues associated with PHP 6 but also to highlight the significant performance improvements that PHP 7 brought to the table.
PHP 7 introduced a new version of the Zend Engine, which resulted in significant performance gains compared to PHP 5. It also brought new features, improved error handling, and a more consistent and predictable language behavior.
3. Conclusion
So, PHP 6 has vanished into thin air, giving way to PHP 7. The decision to abandon PHP 6 was driven by the major challenges it encountered in terms of Unicode support and performance. The PHP community made a strategic move to start afresh with PHP 7, which proved to be a success. PHP 7 not only addressed the shortcomings of PHP 5 but also introduced significant performance improvements, making it the go-to choice for developers.
Despite the absence of PHP 6, the legacy of its development process lives on. The Unicode support and performance enhancements that were originally intended for PHP 6 were eventually integrated into PHP 7, ensuring that the goals set for PHP 6 were not completely in vain.