What is PHP?
Notice how this is different from
a script written in other languages like Perl or C -- instead
of writing a program with lots of commands to output HTML,
you write an HTML script with some embedded code to do something
(in this case, output some text). The PHP code is enclosed
in special start and end tags that allow you to jump into
and out of "PHP mode".
What distinguishes PHP from something like client-side JavaScript
is that the code is executed on the server. If you were to
have a script similar to the above on your server, the client
would receive the results of running that script, with no
way of determining what the underlying code may be. You can
even configure your web server to process all your HTML files
with PHP, and then there's really no way that users can tell
what you have up your sleeve.
The best things in using PHP are that it is extremely simple
for a newcomer, but offers many advanced features for a
professional programmer. Don't be afraid reading the long
list of PHP's features. You can jump in, in a short time,
and start writing simple scripts in a few hours.
Although PHP's development is focused on server-side scripting,
you can do much more with it. Read on, and see more in the
What can PHP do? section.
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