what does php mean?

Anon

What does php mean?

Anon

Hypertext Pre-Processor

(actually HPP but they preffered PHP)

Anon

I have always heard that it stood for Personal Home Page.

Anon

It is not personal home page - that would just be a dumb acronym. It stands for (off the php website) Pre HTML Processor. Errgh... Why don't people just look things up.

Anon

"Personal Home Page" tools (first as Perl)

PHP/FI 2.0 (FI: Form Interpreter)

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor <-- from the manual dated: Thu Mar 9 01:38:57 EST 2000

dumb is as dumb does...

;^P

Anon

It used to mean Personal Home Page...But now it is PHP Hypertext pre-processor. Following the same logic as WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator)

Anon

php is a server side scripts unlike javascript
which runs only on client browser
you can include html tags on the php codes
..and is powerful ..
check www.php.net explore them

Anon

Chapter 43. 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 3 and PHP 4?
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.

A nice introduction to PHP by Stig Sæther Bakken can be found here on the Zend website. Also, much of the PHP Conference Material is freely available.

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. The curious can visit Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing for more information on recursive acronyms.