Proposal: Allow trailing &&, ||, and, or in parenthesized boolean expressions (e.g., ( $a && $b && )). The parser consumes and discards the trailing operator, leaving the AST unchanged.
Scope:
Valid inside parenthesized expressions, control‑structure conditions (if, elseif, while, do‑while, switch), and match arms.
Not allowed in bare expressions, return statements, or array elements.
Rationale: Improves diff readability, eases reordering and commenting of conditions; mirrors existing trailing‑comma support.
Backward Compatibility: Purely additive—previous syntax errors become valid, no existing code changes meaning.
Impact on Ecosystem: Parsers, IDEs, static analyzers, and formatters need to recognize the new syntax; auto‑formatters may optionally add/remove trailing operators. No changes to lexer, AST, compiler, or VM.
This RFC is a candidate for inclusion in the weekly developer newsletter as it introduces a notable language feature with practical coding‑style benefits.
RFC: “Pipe to return” (ID: pipe_to_return)
Version: 1.0 (proposed for PHP 8.6)
Status: Under Discussion
Author: Vadim Dvorovenko
Key Idea: Introduce a pipe operator (|>) that can pass the result of an expression directly to return, enabling syntax like "Hello World" |> strlen() |> return;. This aims to simplify code flow and reduce cognitive load by keeping a consistent left‑to‑right, top‑to‑bottom reading direction.
Syntax: expr |> return (equivalent to return expr)
Multi‑line: same pipeline broken across lines, ending with |> return;
Invalid Cases (parse‑time errors): pipe after return, using return inside arrow functions, etc.
Compatibility: No backward incompatibilities expected; new operator is syntactic sugar producing the same bytecode as a normal return.
Future Scope: Similar piping to throw may be explored in a separate RFC.
New RFC proposes two closure optimizations for PHP 8.next.
Static closure inference – closures that never use $this (and satisfy a set of rules) are automatically treated as static, eliminating reference cycles and improving memory usage.
Stateless closure caching – stateless closures (static, no captured vars or static vars) are cached between calls, reducing instantiation overhead. Benchmarks show ~80% speedup in synthetic tests and ~3% improvement in a Laravel template.
BC breaks: ReflectionFunction::getClosureThis() now returns NULL for inferred‑static closures; identical stateless closures from the same lexical location compare equal (===). Closure binding behavior adjusted to allow objects on inferred static closures only.
New script runner flags: --parallel, --sequential with full --filter/--workspaces support for concurrent/sequential package.json scripts.
HTTP/2 connection upgrades via net.Server → Http2SecureServer now work correctly.
mock() and spyOn() now implement [Symbol.dispose] for automatic cleanup (using keyword).
NO_PROXY respected even with explicit proxy options in fetch() / WebSocket().
Added --cpu-prof-interval flag to control CPU profiler sampling interval.
ESM bytecode support: --bytecode --format=esm now works; defaults remain CommonJS until future change.
ARMv8.0 target fix for mimalloc crashes on older ARM64 CPUs.
Performance boosts:
Markdown: SIMD‑accelerated scanning (3–15% faster), cached tag strings in Bun.markdown.react().
AbortSignal.abort(): skips event creation when no listeners (~6% micro‑benchmark improvement).
JavaScriptCore upgrades: SIMD regex prefix search, JIT for fixed‑count parentheses, intrinsics for String.startsWith, Set.size/Map.size, String.trim, and rope return for String.replace.
Compatibility & bug fixes:
Node.js fs ops (existsSync('.'), etc.) now work on Windows.
Correct Thai character width handling in Bun.stringWidth.
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