haphpiness

Pipe Operator |>

PHP 8.5's most anticipated feature: the pipe operator. It takes the value on the left and passes it as the first argument to the callable on the right. No more nested function calls or temporary variables — just clean, left-to-right data flow.

// Before: nested calls — read inside-out
$result = strtolower(str_replace(' ', '-', str_replace('.', '', trim($title))));

// Before: temporary variables — cluttered
$result = trim($title);
$result = str_replace('.', '', $result);
$result = str_replace(' ', '-', $result);
$result = strtolower($result);

// After: pipe — read left to right, like a unix pipeline
$slug = $title
    |> trim(...)
    |> (fn($s) => str_replace('.', '', $s))
    |> (fn($s) => str_replace(' ', '-', $s))
    |> strtolower(...);

// Perfect for data transformation pipelines
$report = $rawData
    |> array_filter(fn($row) => $row['active'])
    |> array_map(fn($row) => $row['revenue'], ...)
    |> array_sum(...)
    |> (fn($total) => number_format($total, 2));

The pipe operator uses first-class callable syntax (...) for built-in functions and arrow functions or closures when you need to customize argument positions. It's the functional programming primitive that PHP's been missing.