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<entry xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <title>PHP 7.0.0 RC 2 Released</title>
  <id>http://php.net/archive/2015.php#id2015-09-04-1</id>
  <published>2015-09-04T11:30:00+01:00</published>
  <updated>2015-09-04T11:30:00+01:00</updated>
  <category term="releases" label="New PHP release"/>
  <category term="frontpage" label="PHP.net frontpage news"/>
  <link href="http://php.net/index.php#id2015-09-04-1" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  <link href="http://php.net/archive/2015.php#id2015-09-04-1" rel="via" type="text/html"/>
  <content type="xhtml">
    <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
      <p>
        The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of
        PHP 7.0.0 RC 2. This is the seventh pre-release of the new PHP 7
        major series. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully,
        and report any bugs and incompatibilities in <a href="https://bugs.php.net">the bug tracking system</a>.
     </p>

     <strong>THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO <u>NOT</u> USE IT IN PRODUCTION!</strong>

     <p>
     PHP 7.0.0 RC 2 contains fixes for 28 reported bugs, 7 of which are security related, and altogether over 250 commits with various improvements.
     </p>

     <p>
      PHP 7.0.0 comes with new version of the Zend Engine with features such as (incomplete list):
     </p>
     <ul>
        <li>Improved performance: PHP 7 is up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6</li>
        <li>Consistent 64-bit support</li>
        <li>Many fatal errors are now Exceptions</li>
        <li>Removal of old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions</li>
        <li>The null coalescing operator (??)</li>
        <li>Combined comparison Operator (&lt;=&gt;)</li>
        <li>Return Type Declarations</li>
        <li>Scalar Type Declarations</li>
        <li>Anonymous Classes</li>
     </ul>

     <p>
      For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the
      <a href="https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/php-7.0.0RC2/NEWS">NEWS file</a>, or the
      <a href="https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/php-7.0.0RC2/UPGRADING">UPGRADING file</a>
      for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive.
     </p>

     <p>
      For source downloads of PHP 7.0.0 RC 2 please visit
      the <a href="https://downloads.php.net/ab/">download page</a>, Windows source and binaries
      can be found on <a href="http://windows.php.net/qa/">windows.php.net/qa/</a>.
     </p>

     <p>
      The next release will be RC 3, which is to be released on the 17th of September. You can also
      read the full list of planned releases on our <a href="https://wiki.php.net/todo/php70#timetable">wiki</a>.
     </p>

     <p>
        Thank you for helping us make PHP better.
     </p>
    </div>
  </content>
</entry>
