As a budding PHP developer, it??™s important
you possess some insight into how the language has progressed, as it will help you
to understand the language??™s strengths, and to some extent the reasoning behind its
occasional idiosyncrasies.
Additionally, because the language is so popular, having some understanding of the
differences between the versions??”most notably versions 4, 5, and 6??”will help when
evaluating Web hosting providers and PHP-driven applications for your own needs.
To help you quickly get up to speed in this regard, this chapter will get you acquainted
with PHP??™s features and version-specific differences. By the conclusion of this chapter,
you??™ll learn the following:
??? How a Canadian developer??™s Web page traffic counter spawned one of the world??™s
most popular scripting languages
??? What PHP??™s developers did to reinvent the language, making version 5 the best
yet released
??? Why PHP 6 is going to further propel PHP??™s adoption in the enterprise
??? Which features of PHP attract both new and expert programmers alike
?– Note At the time of publication, PHP 6 was still a beta release, although many of the features are
stable enough that they can safely be discussed throughout the course of the book. But be forewarned;
some of these features could change before the final version is released.
2 CHAPTER 1 ?– I NTRODUCING PHP
History
The origins of PHP date back to 1995 when an independent software development
contractor named Rasmus Lerdorf developed a Perl/CGI script that enabled him
to know how many visitors were reading his online r?©sum?©.
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