The PHP Group: PHP 8.0 arrives with union types, JIT compilation

PHP 8.0, a major upgrade to the popular dynamic language for server-side web programming, is now available as a production release, featuring union types, named arguments, attributes, and Just-In-Time compilation.Union types accept values of multiple different types. They allow passing arguments to a function based on the parameter name, rather than the parameter position. This makes the meaning of the argument self-documenting, makes arguments order-independent, and allows for arbitrarily skipping default values.[ Also on InfoWorld: 6 Windows desktop utilities every software developer needs ]While PHP already supported two special union types (Type or Null and array or Traversable), arbitrary union types were not supported by the language, which instead has leveraged phpdoc annotations. After generics, union types have been considered the largest "hole" in the PHP type declaration system.To read this article in full, please click here