PHP 7: Real World Application Development

Miscellaneous features and changes

PHP 7 also introduced some other new features with small changes, such as new syntax for array constants, multiple default cases in switch statement, options array in session_start, and so on. Let's have a look at these too.

Constant arrays

Starting with PHP 5.6, constant arrays can be initialized using the const keyword, as follows:

const STORES = ['en', 'fr', 'ar'];

Now, starting with PHP 7, constant arrays can be initialized using the define function, as follows:

define('STORES', ['en', 'fr', 'ar']);

Multiple default cases in the switch statement

Prior to PHP 7, multiple default cases in a switch statement were allowed. Check out the following example:

switch(true) { default: echo 'I am first one'; break; default: ...