PHP
PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page.
It started out as a simple "CGI wrapper" for HTML
since it parses HTML documents for special PHP tags
and passes normal HTML code through unchanged.
Although the acronym has stuck, PHP has expanded.
It can now manipulate entire sites, not just single pages.
The PHP module does not implement CGI at all, but can
execute embedded scripts that are as complex
as any you might write for CGI.
Definitions: PHP is a server-side,
HTML-embedded scripting language
and form interpreter, &
an easy alternative to CGI
since the technical details of these functions are
transparent to the person writing PHP scripts,
so one needs only tounderstand what the functions do,
not how they are carried out on the system.
These functions can be arranged in any fashion,
which gives you the flexibility to write PHP scripts that
are customized for your needs, with PHP, you can:
-
embed C-like scripts in your HTML files
-
embed SQL queries in your HTML files for querying an
mSQL, mysql, Solid, Sybase, or Postgres95 database
-
automatically generate footers with access information
-
control access via a built-in, Web-based configuration screen
-
support RFC-1867-compliant user file uploads
PHP processes embedded scripts without the aid
of CGI, &
performs faster than CGI in most cases.
By default, it is compiled into the server without
support for access control, page logging, or file uploads.
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