PHP

PHP is a way to make websites.

A man named Rasmus Lerdorf made it in 1993. He used it to help his own web page. It can make web pages change for each person. This happens on a special computer called a server.

The code tells the server what to show. It can even show pictures to you. Many people use it to build big sites. It is a very helpful tool for the web.

PHP is a tool used to make websites.

A man named Rasmus Lerdorf made it in 1993. He first used it to manage his own web page.

PHP works on a web server. A server is a special computer that holds website data. When you visit a site, the server reads the PHP code. It then sends back things like text or images.

This helps make pages that can change for each user.

Over time, PHP has changed a lot. In 1998, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewrote parts of it. They made the Zend Engine to help it run.

This engine acts like a motor for the code.

New versions make PHP faster and stronger. PHP 7 was built to be very quick. PHP 8 added a JIT compiler. A JIT compiler is a tool that helps code run even faster. Today, many people use PHP to build big web tools. It is free for anyone to use.

PHP is a special tool used to build websites. It is a scripting language, which is a set of instructions for computers. Most people use it for web development.

This language helps create pages that can change. For example, a site might show different information to different people. While it is mostly for the web, it can do other tasks too. It is free software that anyone can use.

When you visit a website, PHP works behind the scenes on a web server. A server is a computer that holds website data.

First, the server reads the PHP code using something called an interpreter. This interpreter can work as a module or a special program. Then, the code is executed to create data. This data might be HTML text or even an image. Finally, the server sends this information back to your screen.

A programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf started this journey in 1993. He originally wrote small programs in a language called C. He used them to manage his own personal homepage.

He called his early version PHP/FI. It could handle web forms and talk to databases. In 1995, he released it to the public. It was not meant to be a whole new language at first. It just grew as he added new steps to it.

Many people helped PHP grow into what it is today. In 1997, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewrote the code. They created the base for PHP 3 and changed its name. This new name, PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, is a recursive acronym. They also built the Zend Engine in 1999. This engine acts like a motor for the code.

Later, a group called the PHP Group began producing the official version.

New versions of PHP make the language faster and smarter. PHP 7 was a huge step for speed. It used a new engine called Zend Engine 3. In 2020, PHP 8 was released with a JIT compiler. A JIT compiler helps the computer run math tasks even faster. PHP also added new ways to organize data. It can now use things called union types and attributes. These tools help developers write better and more organized code.

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language designed primarily for web development. A scripting language is a set of instructions that a computer follows to perform specific tasks. While PHP is mostly used to build websites, it can also be used for programming tasks outside of the web context.

Today, the official reference implementation of PHP is managed by the PHP Group. It is free software released under the PHP License, meaning it can be deployed on almost any operating system or web server platform.

When a user requests a webpage, PHP works on a web server through a process called interpretation. The PHP code is processed by a PHP interpreter. This interpreter can function as a module, a daemon, or a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable.

During this process, the interpreter executes the code to generate data. This data can be any type, such as HTML text or binary image data. This resulting data then forms the HTTP response sent to the user's browser. Various web frameworks and content management systems can be used to help organize how these responses are generated.

The history of PHP began in 1993 with a programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf. He originally wrote several CGI programs using the C language to maintain his own personal homepage. He later extended these programs to work with HTML forms and communicate with databases. He called this early version PHP/FI, which stood for Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter.

Lerdorf released PHP/FI as "Personal Home Page Tools" on June 8, 1995. Interestingly, PHP was not originally intended to be a formal programming language. It grew organically as Lerdorf added new features to meet his needs. This organic growth sometimes led to inconsistent function names or parameter orders in early versions.

A major turning point occurred in 1997 when Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewrote the parser. This work formed the foundation for PHP 3, which was officially launched in June 1998. At this time, the name was changed to a recursive backronym: PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. Suraski and Gutmans also created the Zend Engine in 1999 and founded Zend Technologies in Israel.

This engine acts as the core power for the language. Following this, PHP 4.0 was released on May 22, 2000, powered by Zend Engine 1.0. By August 2008, the PHP 4 branch had reached version 4.4.9, though it is no longer under development.

In 2004, PHP 5.0 was released with the new Zend Engine 2.0. This version brought significant changes, such as an overhauled approach to object-oriented programming. It also introduced iterators and exceptions. Later, the PHP 5.x series became the primary stable version. In 2008, a group of developers started the GoPHP5 initiative to help people move from PHP 4 to PHP 5. Developers also worked on a project to add Unicode support to the language. This project, intended for PHP 6, was eventually abandoned due to performance issues and a shortage of developers. Instead, the features were integrated into later PHP 5 releases, such as PHP 5.3 and 5.4.

PHP 7.0 was developed during 2014 and 2015 to greatly improve performance. This version was based on a project called "phpng," or PHP next generation. It was written by Dmitry Stogov, Xinchen Hui, and Nikita Popov. By July 2014, benchmarks showed that this new approach increased performance by almost 100% in WordPress environments. This version used Zend Engine 3 and introduced a more consistent type system. It allowed for scalar types like integers and strings to be used in function declarations. It also added new operators, such as the "spaceship" three-way comparison operator.

The release of PHP 8.0 on November 26, 2020, introduced even more advanced features. One major addition was a JIT compiler, or just-in-time compiler. A JIT compiler can provide substantial performance boosts, especially for mathematical operations. PHP 8.0 also introduced attributes, which allow metadata to be added to program elements like classes or methods. The language has continued to grow more strict and organized through the addition of composite types. These include union types, intersection types, and disjunctive normal form (DNF) types. These tools help programmers write more precise and reliable code.