A new type, object, has been introduced that can be used for (contravariant) parameter typing and (covariant) return typing of any objects. Shared extensions no longer require their file extension (.so for Unix or .dll for Windows) to be specified. This is enabled in the php.ini file, as well as in the dl function. Abstract methods can now be overridden when an abstract class extends another abstract class. The modern Sodium cryptography library has now become a core extension in PHP. For a complete function reference, see the Sodium chapter. Argon2 has been added to the password hashing API, where the following constants have been exposed: PASSWORD_ARGON2I PASSWORD_ARGON2_DEFAULT_MEMORY_COST PASSWORD_ARGON2_DEFAULT_TIME_COST PASSWORD_ARGON2_DEFAULT_THREADS PDO's string type has been extended to support the national character type when emulating prepares. This has been done with the following constants: PDO::PARAM_STR_NATL PDO::PARAM_STR_CHAR PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_STR_PARAM These constants are utilised by bitwise OR'ing them with PDO::PARAM_STR: quote('über', PDO::PARAM_STR | PDO::PARAM_STR_NATL); ]]> The PDOStatement::debugDumpParams method has been updated to include the SQL being sent to the DB, where the full, raw query (including the replaced placeholders with their bounded values) will be shown. This has been added to aid with debugging emulated prepares (and so it will only be available when emulated prepares are turned on). Support for EXOP has been added to the LDAP extension. This has been done by exposing the following functions and constants: ldap_parse_exop ldap_exop ldap_exop_passwd ldap_exop_whoami LDAP_EXOP_START_TLS LDAP_EXOP_MODIFY_PASSWD LDAP_EXOP_REFRESH LDAP_EXOP_WHO_AM_I LDAP_EXOP_TURN The sockets extension now has the ability to lookup address information, as well as connect to it, bind to it, and explain it. The following four functions have been added for this: socket_addrinfo_lookup socket_addrinfo_connect socket_addrinfo_bind socket_addrinfo_explain Parameter types from overridden methods and from interface implementations may now be omitted. This is still in compliance with LSP, since parameters types are contravariant. A trailing comma can now be added to the group-use syntax introduced in PHP 7.0. The proc_nice function is now supported on Windows. The pack and unpack functions now support float and double in both little and big endian. The EXIF extension has been updated to support a much larger range of formats. This means that their format specific tags are now properly translated when parsing images with the exif_read_data function. The following new formats are now supported: Samsung DJI Panasonic Sony Pentax Minolta Sigma/Foveon AGFA Kyocera Ricoh Epson The EXIF functions exif_read_data and exif_thumbnail now support passing streams as their first argument. The J modifier for setting PCRE_DUPNAMES has been added. SQLite3::openBlob now allows to open BLOB fields in write mode; formerly only read mode was supported. Support for Oracle Database Transparent Application Failover (TAF) callbacks has been added. TAF allows PHP OCI8 applications to automatically reconnect to a preconfigured database when a connection is broken. The new TAF callback support allows PHP applications to monitor and control reconnection during failover. Read and write support for encrypted archives has been added (requires libzip 1.2.0). The ZipArchive class now implements the Countable interface. The zip:// stream now accepts a 'password' context option.