Expectations are a backwards compatible enhancement to the older assert() function. Expectation allows for zero-cost assertions in production code, and provides the ability to throw custom exceptions when the assertion fails. assert() is now a language construct, where the first parameter is an expression as compared to being a string or Boolean to be tested.

IntlChar provides access to a number of utility methods that can be used to access information about Unicode characters.

The methods and constants adhere closely to the names and behavior used by the underlying ICU library.

Despite the wide and increasing adoption of Unicode (and UTF-8 in particular) in PHP applications, PHP does not yet have a Unicode codepoint escape syntax in string literals, unlike many other languages. This is unfortunate, as in many cases it can be useful to specify Unicode codepoints by number, rather than using the codepoint directly. For example, say you wish to output the UTF-8 encoded Unicode codepoint U+202E RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE in order to display text right-to-left. You could embed it in source code directly, but it is an invisible character and would display the rest of the line of code (or indeed entire program) in reverse!

The solution is to add a Unicode codepoint escape sequence syntax to string literals. This would mean you could produce U+202E like so: