PHP Programming
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What is PHP?
PHP ("PHP: Hypertext Processor") is a programming language for the creation of dynamic web pages. As such, in is a reflective language that can process and execute server-side instructions (in scripts). It is also open to being executed from a command line or in stand-alone applications.
There is no formal specification of the language, but the Free Software Foundation has dubbed a version of PHP to be "free software," and that version is regarded as the standard. The PHP Group produces the main implementation of PHP. The current versions of PHP (through 2007) are PHP4 (release 4) and PHP5 (release 2.4), which came out in August of 2007.
PHP started as "Personal Home Page" tools, released by its author, Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. Its origin is in a set of CGI binaries written in C. Israeli developers Suraski and Gutmans republished the parser, which, with other modifications, became PHP3 in 1998. These developers have also formed Zend Technologies, which manages PHP's development. Version 5 is powered by a revised rewrite of PHP's core, called Zend Engine II, which processes bytecode compiled by PHP's parser from scripts.
PHP is generally accepted as the "P" in "LAMP" architecture, which deploys a secure, reliable and inexpensive web server application that also has Linux as OS, Apache as the web server and MySQL as the database query language. (Python and Perl also qualify for the "P" as well). PHP can be used with most operating systems and web servers, and works with most RDBMS's. PHP also allows for a command line interface and several client-side GUI and text applications.
