Upcoming changes in PHP 7.1
I'm more excited by some features not detailed in the article.Return type declarations, which were introduced in PHP 7.0, are being enhanced somewhat.First, it's now possible to declare nullable return types (previously all return types did not permit null):  public function getFoo(): ?int;

(You can also use ? on parameter and property types.)Second, we now have a void return type for functions where there is no useful return value:  public function handle(): void;

(Disclaimer: I wrote the void return type RFC and implementation, so I'm biased here.)We're also getting type declarations for class properties:  class Person
  {
      public string $name;
      public int $age;
      public bool $isEmployee;
  }

There's a few other things as well. The list() syntax (destructuring assignment) has been shortened to [] and now lets you specify keys (disclaimer: I was involved in both of these). Also, trying to add non-numeric strings together with + now produces a warning (disclaimer: also me).