The evolution of the Grass roots PHP language development history

PHP inherits from an old project called Php/fi. Php/fi was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, initially as a simple Perl script to track the information of people visiting his home page. It named this set of scripts "Personal home Page Tools." As more functional requirements increased, Rasmus wrote a larger C-language implementation that could access the database and allow users to develop simple dynamic WEB programs. Rasmus publishes the PHP/FI source code so that everyone can use it, and you can also fix its bugs and improve its source code.

PHP/FI, a program designed to provide an interpreter for your home page/form, already contains some of the basic features of PHP today. It has a Perl-style variable that automatically interprets form variables and can embed HTML. The syntax itself is very similar to Perl, but it's very limited, simple, and slightly uncoordinated.

By 1997, Php/fi 2.0, the second edition of its C-language implementation, had thousands of users (estimated) and approximately 50,000 domain names installed worldwide, about 1% of all domain names on the Internet. But at that time only a few people were writing a small amount of code for the project, and it was still just a person's project.

The official version of PHP/FI 2.0 was released in November 1997 after several beta releases. Shortly after the release of the first alpha version of PHP 3.0, PHP was a success.

　　PHP 3

PHP 3.0 is the first version of today's PHP syntax structure. Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski to develop e-business programs for a university project and found that the PHP/FI 2.0 features were significantly inadequate, so they rewrote the code. This is PHP 3.0. After a series of efforts by Andi,rasmus and Zeev, taking into account Php/fi's existing user base, they decided to jointly publish PHP 3.0 as the official successor to PHP/FI 2.0. The further development of the PHP/FI 2.0 terminated however almost.

One of the most powerful features of PHP 3.0 is its scalability. In addition to providing end users with the infrastructure for databases, protocols, and APIs, its scalability has also attracted a large number of developers to join and submit new modules. This, it turns out, is the key to PHP 3.0 's great success. Other key features in PHP 3.0 include object-oriented support and a more robust and coordinated syntax structure.

This whole new language is accompanied by a new name release. It removes from the name of PHP/FI 2.0 the part that implies that "this language is limited to personal use". It is named the simple abbreviation "PHP". This is a recursive abbreviation, its full name is--php:hypertext preprocessor.

At the end of 1998, PHP installed nearly 10,000 people, and about 100,000 websites reported using PHP. At the peak of PHP 3.0, it was installed on 10% of the WEB servers on the Internet.

After about nine months of public testing, the official release of PHP 3.0 in June 1998.

　　PHP 4

In the winter of 1998, shortly after the official release of PHP 3.0, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski began rewriting the PHP code. The design goal is to enhance the performance of complex program runtime and the modularity of PHP's own code. PHP 3.0 's new features and extensive Third-party database and API support make this program possible, but PHP 3.0 does not have the ability to efficiently handle such complex programs.

The new engine, dubbed "Zend Engine" (which is the abbreviation for Zeev and Andi), succeeded in achieving the design goals and first introduced PHP in the middle of 1999. PHP 4.0, which is based on the engine and combined with more new features, released its official version in May 2000, two years after the release of PHP 3.0. In addition to higher performance, PHP 4.0 includes some other key features, such as support for more WEB servers; HTTP Sessions support; output caching (outputs buffering); a more secure way to handle user input; some new language structures.

PHP 4 is the latest version of current PHP. The work of modifying and enhancing Zend Engine so that PHP 5.0 consolidates the new features has begun.

Today, 10,000 developers (estimates) and millions of web site reports have PHP installed, representing 20% of the entire Internet domain name.

PHP's development team has many good developers, as well as a large number of talented people in the development of PHP-related projects, such as PEAR and PHP documentation works.

　　PHP 5

The future of PHP is mainly controlled by its core, Zend Engine. PHP 5 will contain a new generation of Zend Engine 2.0. Please visit its Web site for more information about the engine.