The Pipe Operator is Coming to PHP 8.5

The Pipe Operator is coming to PHP 8.5 when its released on November 20, 2025. This operator is an exciting prospect for PHP developers wanting to chain multiple callables together, passing a value through them from left to right in a native way:

The |> operator, or “pipe,” accepts a single-parameter callable on the right and passes the left-side value to it, evaluating to the callable's result.

Pipe (|>) evaluates left to right by passing the value (or expression result) on the left as the first and only parameter to the callable on the right. That is, the following two code fragments are logically equivalent:

From the accepted RFC, here's an example of passing a string through a series of function calls. The operator enables a unified chain of multiple callable functions using first-class callables, thereby simplifying the readability of nested calls. The following example uses a temporary variable.

// Before PHP 8.5, using a temp variable
$temp = "Hello World";
$temp = htmlentities($temp);
$temp = str_split($temp);
$temp = array_map(strtoupper(...), $temp);
$temp = array_filter($temp, fn($v) => $v != 'O');
$result = $temp;

Without using a temporary variable, the above code is the same as the following:

// Nested
$result = array_filter(
    array_map(
        strtoupper(...),
        str_split(
            htmlentities("Hello World")
        )
    ),
    fn($v) => $v != 'O'
);

Finally, the PHP 8.5 pipe operator illustrates how to process a simple string through a series of steps, but keep the code more readable:

// Using the pipe operator in PHP 8.5
$result = "Hello World"
    |> htmlentities(...)
    |> str_split(...)
    |> fn($x) => array_map(strtoupper(...), $x)
    |> fn($x) => array_filter($x, fn($v) => $v != 'O');

The temporary variable version feels nearly as readable as using the pipeline operator. Still, I like how the pipe operator unifies each step as a cohesive group of function calls.

#Learn More

To learn more about the pipeline operator, check out the RFC proposal for full details: rfc:pipe-operator-v3. If you want to experiment with PHP 8.5, the first Alpha release was tagged on July 3, 2025. Check the todo:php85 page for details.