P H P (PHP HyperText Pre Processor)
PHP is a scriptinglanguage – it gets interpretedinstead of being compiledlike C++ and Java. Unlike JavaScript which is executed by the web browser, all PHP code is executed on the web server. The syntax is very similar to Perl and C. Variables are case sensitive, function names are not, and statements must be terminated with a semicolon.
PHP code should be placed between or tags. The second method is preferred so your scripts are XML compatible. There is no limitation as to where PHP code can be inserted.
To see information about how PHP is configured, version information, and the settings of all environment variables (e.g., HTTP_USER_AGENT and QUERY_STRING),call the phpinfo()function in any script.
The php.inifile is the main configuration file for PHP. It can be edited by the system administrator to change any of the configuration settings. A changeto this file requires the web server be restarted since the file is only read once when the web server starts up. (The phpinfo()function reports the location of php.ini on the server.)
It’s a good idea to turn on error and warning output when developing your code so you don’t misuse PHP syntax in unintended ways. Place the following lines of code at the top of your script so errors willbe reported in the rendered web page: ini_set('display_errors', '1'); error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT); Note that if the php.ini file already has these settings, you don’t need to use these lines of code.
