Standard PHP Library

PHP

Paradigm	Imperative, functional, object-oriented, procedural, reflective
Designed by	Rasmus Lerdorf
Developer	The PHP Development Team, Zend Technologies
First appeared	June 8, 1995; 21 years ago (1995-06-08)
Stable release	7.1.4 / April 12, 2017; 16 days ago (2017-04-12)
Typing discipline	Dynamic, weak, gradual (as of PHP 7.0.0)
Implementation language	C (primarily; some components C++)
OS	Unix-like, Windows
License	PHP License (most of Zend Engine under Zend Engine License & The TSRM License)
Filename extensions	.php, .phtml, .php3, .php4, .php5, .php7, .phps
Website	php.net
Major implementations
Zend Engine, HHVM, Phalanger, Quercus, Project Zero, Parrot
Influenced by
C, C++, Java, Perl, Tcl
Influenced
Falcon, Hack

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed primarily for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. Originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, the PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Development Team. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

PHP code may be embedded into HTML or HTML5 markup, or it can be used in combination with various web template systems, web content management systems and web frameworks. PHP code is usually processed by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module in the web server or as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. The web server software combines the results of the interpreted and executed PHP code, which may be any type of data, including images, with the generated web page. PHP code may also be executed with a command-line interface (CLI) and can be used to implement standalone graphical applications.

The standard PHP interpreter, powered by the Zend Engine, is free software released under the PHP License. PHP has been widely ported and can be deployed on most web servers on almost every operating system and platform, free of charge.