Zephir

Zephir stands for Ze(nd Engine) Ph(p) I(nt)r(mediate).

With Zephir, developers can create extensions for PHP running under the Zend Engine.

Zephir allows them to build these PHP extensions in C, which when used in production environments are much faster and more responsive than native extensions.

Since Zephir combines features from both C, it's original medium, and PHP, it's target environment, it can give programmers leeway in deciding which of the extensions' parts are compiled for better performance, and which are interpreted each time for easier customization.

Features:

• Memory safety
• Ahead-of-time compiler
• Dynamic typing
• Static typing
• Reduced execution overhead
• Restricted procedural programming

Requirements:

• PHP 5.3 or higher