PHP 7.3 features and release date
The PHP 7.3 release is not heavy on major features or performance improvements, rather it's a gradual improvement, with improvements across the board such as:
- Improvements to Heredoc and Nowdoc syntaxes
- Allowing a trailing comma in function calls
- Improved exception handing for JSON functions
- Adding array_key_first() and array_key_last() functions
More significant improvements, such as typed class properties are expected to land in PHP 7.4 in 2019. For PHP 7.3 the release date is set to December 6th 2018. The path leading to the release of PHP 7.3.0 is listed on the PHP Wiki: PHP 7.3 timetable