What do those darn letters mean ...?

Anon

Hello again,

All u clever programmers ... can anyone tell me what the letters PHP stand for ...

++Tx

Anon

PHP stands for :
Php Hypertext Preprocessor

Anon

I thought it was Pre Hypertext Processor, since it is parsed and then the hypertext is created...

---John

PS: What does the Php stand for in 'Php Hypertext Preprocessor'?? 😉

Anon

I could of sworn I read somewhere that Rasmus Lerdorf used PHP to stand for "Personal Home Page(s)", when he create it to keep track of who was viewing his personal website.

However, from the zend site: http://www.zend.com/zend/aboutphp.php

What is PHP?
PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open-source server-side scripting language (freely downloadable from php.net and zend.com) for creating dynamic Web pages for e-commerce and other Web applications.

A recursive acronym...sounds like someone made that up, doesn't it? 😉

Anon

Aha! I thought I was write grin

Rasmus Lerdorf created a Perl CGI script he called: "PHP-Tools for "Personal Home Page"

http://www.zend.com/zend/hof/rasmus.php

Love backstory 😉

Anon

A recursive acronym...sounds like someone made that up, doesn't it?

I don't gnu what you are talking about!

Anon

Hi again,

The results of my query so far are:

Personal Home Page
Php Hypertext preprocessor
Pre Hypertext Processor

I think PHP deserves more credit than to mean result number 1.

The second result answers part of my question and I take it is the recursive acronym (a bit like being in a recursive loop).

The third sounds the most sensible ...

Does anyone know of any official PHP publications that have the meaning of the letters. I have seen somewhere the third result but I do not know where ... I would just like to be sure.

++Tx Pete

Anon

Number 2 is right from the manual, so it's the "correct" answer.

PHP (officially "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") is a server-side HTML-embedded scripting language.

Now, I "think" the PHP in PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor stands for Personal Home Pages, I remember reading somewhere that was the original name.

So, in conclusion, PHP stands for:

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
(Personal Home Pages): Hypertext Preprocessor.

I think number 3 is a whole lot easier to explain, though....my $0.02.

---John Holmes.

Anon

The "PHP" in "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor".

That's the idea of a recursive acronym :-)

/Mike