Core

The high resolution timer (hrtime) on macOS now uses the recommended clock_gettime_nsec_np(CLOCK_UPTIME_RAW) API instead of mach_absolute_time().

CGI/CLI

The -z or --zend-extension option has been removed as it was non-functional. Use -d zend_extension=[path] instead.

PDO_ODBC

The fetch behaviour for larger columns has been changed. Rather than fetching 256 byte blocks, PDO_ODBC will try to fetch a larger block size; currently, this is the page size minus string overhead. Drivers that return SQL_NO_TOTAL in SQLGetData are also better handled as well. This should improve compatibility and performance.

CLI

Trying to set a process title that is too long with cli_set_process_title will now fail instead of silently truncating the given title.

Added a new --ini=diff option to print INI settings changed from the builtin default.

FPM

FPM with httpd ProxyPass optionally decodes the full script path. Added fastcgi.script_path_encoded INI setting to prevent this new behavior.

FPM access log limit now respects log_limit value.

Intl

grapheme_extract properly assigns $next value when skipping over invalid starting bytes. Previously there were cases where it would point to the start of the grapheme boundary instead of the end.

transliterator_get_error_code, transliterator_get_error_message, TransLiterator::getErrorCode, and TransLiterator::getErrorMessage have dropped false from the return type union. Returning false was actually never possible.

The following functions now support a $locale argument: grapheme_strpos, grapheme_stripos, grapheme_strrpos, grapheme_strripos, grapheme_substr, grapheme_strstr and grapheme_stristr

LDAP

ldap_get_option now accepts a null connection, like ldap_set_option, to allow retrieval of global options.

libxml

libxml_set_external_entity_loader now has a formal return type of true.

OpenSSL

openssl_public_encrypt and openssl_private_decrypt have a new parameter $digest_algo that allows specifying the hash digest algorithm for OAEP padding.

openssl_sign and openssl_verify have a new parameter $padding to allow using more secure RSA PSS padding.

openssl_cms_encrypt $cipher_algo parameter can be a string with the cipher name. That allows to use more algorithms including AES GCM cipher algorithms for auth enveloped data.

PCNTL

pcntl_exec now has a formal return type of false.

pcntl_waitid takes an additional resource_usage argument to gather various platform specific metrics about the child process.

PDO_PGSQL

Pdo\Pgsql::copyFromArray now supports iterable inputs.

Pdo\Pgsql::setAttribute and Pdo\Pgsql::prepare support setting PDO::ATTR_PREFETCH to 0 which enters lazy fetch mode. In this mode, statements cannot be run in parallel.

PostgreSQL

pg_copy_from now supports iterable inputs.

pg_connect checks if the connection_string argument contains any null byte.

pg_close_stmt checks if the statement_name argument contains any null byte.

POSIX

posix_ttyname sets last_error to EBADF when encountering an invalid file descriptor.

posix_isatty raises an E_WARNING message when encountering an invalid file descriptor.

posix_fpathconf checks invalid file descriptors and sets last_error to EBADF and raises an E_WARNING message.

Reflection

The output of ReflectionClass::__toString for enums has changed to better indicate that the class is an enum, and that the enum cases are enum cases rather than normal class constants.

The output of ReflectionProperty::__toString for properties with hooks has changed to indicate what hooks the property has, whether those hooks are final, and whether the property is virtual. This also affects the output of ReflectionClass::__toString when a class contains hooked properties.

Sockets

socket_create/socket_bind can create AF_PACKET family sockets.

socket_getsockname gets the interface index and its string representation with AF_PACKET socket.

Zlib

The $use_include_path argument for the gzfile, gzopen and readgzfile functions has been changed from int to bool.

gzfile, gzopen and readgzfile functions now respect the default stream context.

cURL

curl_setopt with CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION option's value no longer is treated as boolean but integer to handle CURLFOLLOW_OBEYCODE and CURLFOLLOW_FIRSTONLY.

Fileinfo

Upgraded file from 5.45 to 5.46.

The return type of finfo_close has been changed to true, rather than bool.

Intl

Intl's internal error mechanism has been modernized so that it indicates more accurately which call site caused what error. Moreover, some ext/date exceptions have been wrapped inside a IntlException now.

Lexbor

An always enabled lexbor extension is added. It contains the lexbor library that was separated from ext/dom for being reused among other extensions. The new extension is not directly exposed to userland.

Opcache

The Opcache extension is now always built into the PHP binary and is always loaded. The INI directives opcache.enable and opcache.enable_cli are still honored.

PCRE

Upgraded pcre2lib from 10.44 to 10.46.

PDO_Sqlite

Increased minimum release version support from 3.7.7 to 3.7.17.

Readline

The return types of readline_add_history, readline_clear_history, and readline_callback_handler_install have been changed to true, rather than bool.

Reflection

ReflectionConstant is no longer final.

Core

Added fatal_error_backtraces to control whether fatal errors should include a backtrace.

Added startup-only max_memory_limit INI setting to control the maximum memory_limit that may be configured at startup or runtime. Exceeding this value emits a warning, unless set to -1, and sets memory_limit to the current max_memory_limit instead.

Opcache

Added opcache.file_cache_read_only to support a read-only opcache.file_cache directory, for use with read-only file systems (e.g. read-only Docker containers). Best used with opcache.validate_timestamps=0, opcache.enable_file_override=1, and opcache.file_cache_consistency_checks=0.

Note: A cache generated with a different build of PHP, a different file path, or different settings (including which extensions are loaded), may be ignored.

The default value of opcache.jit_hot_loop is now 61 (a prime) to prevent it from being a multiple of loop iteration counts. It is recommended that this parameter is set to a prime number.

Changing opcache.memory_consumption when OPcache SHM is already set up will now correctly report a failure instead of silently doing nothing and showing misleading values in PHPInfo.

OpenSSL

Added openssl.libctx to select the OpenSSL library context type. Either custom libctx for each thread can be used or a single global (default) libctx is used.

Core

Remove OPcodes for identity comparisons against booleans, particularly for the match(true) pattern.

Add OPcode specialization for === [] and !== [] comparisons.

Creating exception objects is now much faster.

The parts of the code that used SSE2 have been adapted to use SIMD with ARM NEON as well.

Introduced the TAILCALL VM, enabled by default when compiling with Clang>=19 on x86_64 or aarch64. The TAILCALL VM is as fast as the HYBRID VM used when compiling with GCC. This makes PHP binaries built with Clang>=19 as fast as binaries built with GCC. The performance of the CALL VM, used with other compilers, has also improved considerably.

Intl

Now avoids creating extra string copies when converting strings for use in the collator.

MBString

The parts of the code that used SSE2 have been adapted to use SIMD with ARM NEON as well.

Opcache

Improved performance of fetching TLS variables in JIT'ed code in non-Glibc builds.

Reflection

Improved performance of the following methods:

• ReflectionProperty::getValue
• ReflectionProperty::getRawValue
• ReflectionProperty::isInitialized
• ReflectionProperty::isInitialized
• ReflectionProperty::setValue
• ReflectionProperty::setRawValue

SPL

Improved performance of dimension accessors and methods of SplFixedArray.

Standard

Improved performance of array functions with callbacks (array_find, array_filter, array_map, usort, ...).

Improved performance of urlencode and rawurlencode.

Improved unpack performance with nameless repetitions by avoiding creating temporary strings and reparsing them.

Improved pack performance.

Minor improvements in array_chunk performance.

XML

Improved XMLReader property access performance.

Improved XMLWriter performance and reduced memory consumption.