|
PHP is an amazing open-source scripting language for websites. PHP is free software,
a concept which can seem a little strange to those who are not used to the Unix world. It can and does run
exceptionally well on Windows-based web servers, however, it does run the best on the system for which it was
originally designed, Unix.
PHP was originally programmed in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf as a tool
to help manage his homepage. PHP grew from a simple PERL wrapper originally called Personal Home Page Tools, later
renamed to Professional Home Pages and eventually Hypertext Pre-Processor. In 1995, PHP/FI 2 was released,
and by the end of 1996 was in use by an estimated 15,000 people worldwide.
During 1997 Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans rewrote PHP and was launched PHP3, which was to prove
the decisive factor in the success of PHP. By the time PHP4 was released in April 2000, PHP was in use by over 1
million sites worldwide, and to this day it's growth continues unabated. A significant credit to it's success can be
attributed to it's simplicity as a language and it's powerful set of available extensions, in addition to it's free
availablity and open source. In addition to these factors, using PHP on web pages has in recent times has been
considered en vogue as more complex and less flexable languages are being shelved in place of PHP's ready
availablity on today's web servers.
PHP draws it's strengths from a highly flexible language derived from C/C++ and it's
predecessor, PERL. While several factors of PHP have been devised specifically for it's use in web pages,
it can still be used as a general purpose scripting language much like PERL. As a standalone interpreted
scripting language, PHP allows for rapid development of even complex tasks with shorter and highly readable
code. As a web development language, PHP is easily integrated into most any HTML document and can be
implemented with nearly any sufficiently advanced web server software. In addition, PHP's extensions offer
unmatched functionality in comparison to any other web scripting language available, which has been made
available by countless developers bringing together a significant collection of open-source software from
around the web.
PHP comes bundled with most major Unix and Linux distributions, often packaged as an easily
installable bundle with the Apache webserver, essentially requiring little knowledge of Unix itself to install.
This has made powerful webservers with full PHP compatibility available to most computer enthusiasts regardless of
their existing knowledge of Unix environments. If you have access to such a system, developing PHP applications in
a Unix environment is the best platform to work from overall.
A significant portion of PHP's syntax, conditions, boolean functionality and loops have been
copied from C, and as such, PHP is an amazingly simple language to pick up, especially for those already familiar
with C and it's derivatives.
PHP's variable handling has been borrowed from PERL. While variables can (and should) be typecast,
there is no requirement for this to happen. In some cases, this is desired behaviour and in no way detracts from
PHP's validity as a proper language, and in fact attributes greatly towards PHP's flexibility and power. PHP will
automatically determine the variables' type at run-time, and is capable of transparently switching between types.
Perhaps one of the most beneficial characteristics of PHP is the fact that it's very well
documented. In fact, it boasts one of the best and most informative pages around, complete with an online manual
featuring user feedback and comments. It also offers online bug-tracking,
an online CVS repository, online source browser,
and news to name a few.
|
