The PHP development team announces the immediate availability of PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 1. This release marks the beginning of the first minor release in the PHP 7.x series. All users of PHP are encouraged to test this version carefully, and report any bugs and incompatibilities in the bug tracking system.

THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!

PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 1 comes with features such as (incomplete list):

• Nullable Types
• Square bracket syntax for array destructuring assignment
• Allow specifying keys in list()
• Generalize support of negative string offsets
• Void Return Type
• Class constant visibility modifiers
• Multi catch

For more information on the new features and other changes, you can read the NEWS file, or the UPGRADING file for a complete list of upgrading notes. These files can also be found in the release archive.

For source downloads of PHP 7.1.0 Alpha 1 please visit the download page, Windows sources and binaries can be found on windows.php.net/qa/.

The second alpha will be released on the 23rd of June. You can also read the full list of planned releases on our wiki.

Thank you for helping us make PHP better.