PHP: PHP hypertext Preprocessor...
What Is PHP?
PHP is a language that has outgrown its name. It was originally conceived as a set of macros to help coders maintain personal home pages, and its name grew from its purpose. Since then, PHP's capabilities have been extended, taking it beyond a set of utilities to a full-featured programming language, capable of managing huge database-driven online environments.
As PHP's capabilities have grown, so too has its popularity. According to NetCraft(http://www.netcraft.com), PHP was running on more than 1 million hosts in November 1999. As of February 2000, that figure had already risen to 1.4 million hosts. According to E-Soft, PHP is the most popular Apache module available, beating even ModPerl.
PHP is now officially known as PHP: HyperText Preprocessor. It is a server-side scripting language usually written in an HTML context. Unlike an ordinary HTML page, a PHP script is not sent directly to a client by the server; instead, it is parsed by the PHP binary or module. HTML elements in the script are left alone, but PHP code is interpreted and executed. PHP code in a script can query databases, create images, read and write files, talk to remote servers— the possibilities are endless. The output from PHP code is combined with the HTML in the script and the result sent to the user.
PHP 5
Most of the important changes in PHP version 5 don’t affect the coding or the use of PHP. They affect the performance of PHP. The Zend engine (the magic, invisible engine that powers PHP) has been significantly improved, and as a result, scripts run faster and more efficiently. The object-oriented programming features of PHP are a major focus of PHP 5.
Object-oriented programming is greatly improved over PHP 4. The creation and use of objects runs much faster, many object-oriented features have been added, and exceptions are introduced. Programmers who prefer object oriented programming will be much happier with PHP 5.
With PHP 5, the names of the PHP programs changed. PHP for the Web is called php-cgi; PHP CLI is called just php, as in php.exe on Windows. Both are stored in the directory where PHP is installed. Prior to PHP 5, both programs were named php.exe, but stored in different subdirectories. PHP 5 adds support for MySQL 4.1 and later. However, support for MySQL is not included with PHP 5 by default. Support for MySQL 4.0 or MySQL 4.1 must be specified when PHP is installed. Prior to PHP 5, support for MySQL 4.0 and earlier was included automatically. PHP 5 includes support for SQLite by default. SQLite provides quick and easy
methods for storing and retrieving data in flat files.
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