What is PHP?

PHP (PHP: HypertextPreprocessor, short for Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely used open-source multi-purpose scripting language that can be embedded into HTML. PHP ("PHP: hypertext Preprocessor (short for hyper text Preprocessor) is a widely used open-source multi-purpose scripting language. it can be embedded in HTML and is especially suitable for web development.
The above is a simple answer, but what does this mean? See the following example:

3. Example
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8. Echo "Hi, I'm a PHP script! ";
9. ?>
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Note the difference between this example and other scripts written in C or Perl-different from writing a program with a large number of commands to output HTML, we have written an HTML script in PHP, which is embedded with some code to do something (for example, some text is output in this example ). PHP code is included in special start and end characters to allow access to "PHP mode ".


Unlike JavaScript on the client, PHP code runs on the server. If a similar code is created on the server, the client can receive the result after running the script, but they cannot know how the code behind it works. You can even set the web server to allow PHP to process all HTML files, so that the user cannot know what the server has done.
One of the major advantages of using PHP is that it is extremely simple for beginners and provides various advanced features to professional programmers. Do not be afraid when you see a long PHP feature list. You can get started quickly and write some simple scripts in just a few hours.

Although PHP is developed for server scripts, its functions are far from limited. Continue to the subsequent sections and get more information in the "what can PHP do" section. If you are interested in web programming, you can also read the concise tutorial.