General Information

This section holds the most general questions about PHP:

what it is and what it does.

What is PHP?

What does PHP stand for?

What is the relation between the versions?

Can I run several versions of PHP at the same time?

What are the differences between PHP 4 and PHP 5?

I think I found a bug! Who should I tell?

What is PHP?

From the preface of the manual:

PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of

its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique

PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to

allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.

What does PHP stand for?

PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

This confuses many people because the first word of the acronym is

the acronym. This type of acronym is called a recursive acronym.

For more information, the curious can visit

»Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

or the

»Wikipedia entry on

recursive acronyms.

What is the relation between the versions?

PHP/FI 2.0 is an early and no longer supported version of PHP. PHP 3

is the successor to PHP/FI 2.0 and is a lot nicer. PHP 5 is the current

generation of PHP, which uses the »Zend

engine 2 which, among other things, offers many additional

OOP features.

Can I run several versions of PHP at the same time?

Yes. See the INSTALL file that is included

in the PHP source distribution.

What are the differences between PHP 4 and PHP 5?

While PHP 5 was purposely designed to be as compatible as

possible with previous versions, there are some significant

changes. Some of these changes include:

A new OOP model

based on the Zend Engine 2.0

A new extension for improved MySQL support

Built-in native support for SQLite

A new error reporting constant,

E_STRICT,

for run-time code suggestions

A host of new

functions

to simplify code authoring (and reduce the need to write your own

functions for many common procedures)

For more detailed information, please view the section on

Migrating from PHP 4 to

PHP 5 and the section on

Backwards

Incompatible Changes.

I think I found a bug! Who should I tell?

You should go to the PHP Bug Database and make sure the bug

isn't a known bug. If you don't see it in the database, use

the reporting form to report the bug. It is important to use

the bug database instead of just sending an email to one of the

mailing lists because the bug will have a tracking number assigned

and it will then be possible for you to go back later and check

on the status of the bug. The bug database can be found at

»http://http://www.zjjv.com///.