What’s New in PHP 8.5? Exploring Pipe Operator, NoDiscard, and Performance Boosts

PHP 8.5 was officially released on 20 November and brings a set of significant language and standard library enhancements for backend developers.

Pipe operator – The new |> operator enables left‑to‑right function chaining, simplifying transformations. Example:

<?php
$result = "PHP Rocks"
    |> htmlentities(...)
    |> str_split(...)
    |> (fn($x) => array_map('strtoupper', $x))
    |> (fn($x) => array_filter($x, fn($v) => $v != '0'));
echo $result, PHP_EOL;

$temp = "PHP Rocks";
$temp = htmlentities($temp);
$temp = str_split($temp);
$temp = array_map('strtoupper', $temp);
$temp = array_filter($temp, fn($v) => $v != '0');
$result = $temp;
echo $result, PHP_EOL;

NoDiscard attribute – Marks a function’s return value as mandatory; ignoring it requires an explicit (void) cast, improving API predictability.

Constant expressions now accept static closures and first‑class callable objects, allowing constructs such as default property values or attribute parameters to embed concise validation logic.

The standard library adds utility functions array_first() and array_last(), persistent cURL handles for DNS and connection reuse, and enhanced fatal‑error backtraces with new error‑query functions.

Several legacy features are deprecated, including the back‑tick alias for shell_exec, non‑standard type‑cast names, and certain magic methods.

Performance tests show noticeable speed improvements, for example when generating SVG charts for articles, demonstrating PHP 8.5’s efficiency gains.