Zephir combines static and dynamic typing in a friendly language that is compiled down to machine code using the industry standard compilers.
Despite being a compiled language, it does not allow you to use pointers, it provides a garbage collector to avoid memory leaks and more.
Zephir takes advantage of the extension ecosystem available in PHP to allow you create your own extensions as shared libraries in Linux/OSX and DLLs on Windows.
Zephir, an open source, high-level language designed to ease the creation and maintainability of extensions for PHP with a focus on type and memory safety.
Zephir is a language that addresses the major needs of a PHP developer trying to write and compile code that can be executed by PHP. It is a dynamically/statically typed, some of its features can be familiar to PHP developers.