Re: [PHP-DEV] [Vote] Add form feed as a whitespace character in trim, ltrim and rtrim

[Ben Ramsey]

On 1/22/26 09:38, LamentXU wrote:

Hi internals,


I am posting this to announce the start of the voting process of the RFC 'Add 
form feed as a whitespace character in trim, ltrim and rtrim'


Wiki page: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/trim_form_feed
discussion thread: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/129706
date to end: 2026/2/6 15:30:00 UTC


Thank you in advance for your participation.


Cheers,
Weilin Du

The RFC is also clear this is a BC break. It says:

> This is a **backward incompatible change**. Scripts that rely on
> `trim()` *preserving* leading or trailing Form Feed characters will
> be affected.



Cheers,
Ben

I've voted "no" on this RFC since the RFC says the proposed PHP version is PHP 8.5, which I interpret as meaning PHP 8.6, since 8.5 was released in November. Even if PHP 8.6 is the proposed version, I still think the target version should be PHP 9.0, since this is a BC break. I mentioned my concern about this being a BC break in the discussion thread. I'm a little surprised by the number of folks who voted "yes" on this, despite it being very clear this is a BC break and PHP "Next" is the implied proposed version.

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