What is a PHP?
PHP is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting, but can be used from a command line interface or in standalone graphical applications. Textual User Interfaces can also be created using ncurses. PHP is a recursive initialism for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
The main implementation is produced by The PHP Group and released under the PHP License. This implementation serves to define a de facto standard for PHP, as there is no formal specification.The most recent version of PHP is 5.2.4, released on 30 August 2007. It is considered to be free software by the Free Software Foundation.
PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating Web pages as output. However, it can also be used for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications. PHP can be deployed on most web servers and on almost every operating system and platform free of charge. The PHP Group also provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use. (Source:Answers.com)
PHP is based on C++ language and the syntax used in PHP is quite similar to C/C++. C/C++ is still considered the best programming language by many programmers and people who love this language would surely feel more comfortable with the syntax of PHP.
Benefit of PHP
- PHP is free to download and use.
- PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.)
- PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
- PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side
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