"Once that's done, we need to test PHP 6 on a number of well-known applications and frameworks, such as Drupal," Zmievski said.

There is  no set date for release of PHP 6, which would follow the release PHP 5.3 this past June. That release included capabilities initially planned for PHP 6 but moved up, such as garbage collection for objects as well as namespaces for better code organization.

Also eyed for PHP 6 is improving how numbers are handled in PHP, including support for long numbers. Another capability being considered is traits, allowing horizontal reuse of code. Developers could add functionality without having to deal with multiple inheritance problems.

Read-only properties and scalar type hints are being considered for the PHP 6 platform. PHP developers also are pondering first order functions, providing a way to refer to functions and methods as objects and be able to pass them around and inspect and modify them.

Briefly touching on plans for a subsequent PHP 7 release, Zmievski cited desires by some to rewrite the language, which he warned against. "There's a lot of calls to change a lot of things, but it's not a good idea to rewrite everything from scratch," he said.