Designed by: Rasmus Lerdorf
OS: Unix-like, Windows, macOS, IBM i, OpenVMS
First appeared: June 8, 1995
Implementation language: C (primarily; some components C++)
Stable release: 8.2.4 / 2023-03-14
Typing discipline: Dynamic, weak, gradual
Paradigm: Multi-paradigm: imperative, functional, object-oriented, procedural, reflective
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| PHP |
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group.
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language designed for web development. It is an open-source language that is widely used to create dynamic web pages and web applications.
PHP was originally created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf as a set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts to track visits to his personal website. Over time, it evolved into a more powerful scripting language that could be used to create dynamic web pages.
One of the main advantages of PHP is its ease of use. PHP code is embedded directly into HTML code, which makes it easy to learn and use for web developers. It also supports a wide range of databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle, making it a popular choice for web application development.
PHP is also highly extensible, with a large number of libraries and frameworks available that can be used to add functionality to web applications. Some popular PHP frameworks include Laravel, Symfony, and CodeIgniter.
In addition to web development, PHP can also be used for command-line scripting and other tasks such as generating PDF documents and image manipulation.
History
The first version of PHP was called "Personal Home Page Tools" (PHP Tools) and included a set of CGI scripts for processing web forms and sending email. In 1997, Lerdorf released PHP/FI (Forms Interpreter), which was a standalone program that could parse HTML forms and generate dynamic web pages.
In 1998, two developers, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, rewrote the PHP/FI codebase to create PHP 3, which included many new features such as support for databases and a more robust scripting engine. PHP 3 was released as an open-source project, and it quickly became a popular language for web development.
In 2000, the PHP development team released PHP 4, which included even more new features such as support for object-oriented programming and better performance. PHP 4 became the most widely used version of PHP and was used by many popular websites, including Yahoo! and Wikipedia.
In 2004, the PHP development team began work on PHP 5, which included significant improvements to the language, including support for exception handling, improved object-oriented programming, and better performance. PHP 5 was released in 2004 and quickly became the new standard for PHP development.
Since then, PHP has continued to evolve with regular releases of new versions. The latest stable version of PHP as of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021 was PHP 8.0, which includes new features such as JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation and improved performance. Today, PHP is one of the most popular server-side scripting languages, powering millions of websites and web applications.
