PHP
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PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is an open source, reflective programming language. Originally designed as a high level scripting language for producing dynamic Web pages, PHP is used mainly in server-side application software. PHP generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as its input and creating Web pages as output, but command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications are part of the three primary uses of PHP as well. PHP was written as a set of CGI binaries in the C programming language by the Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, to replace a small set of Perl scripts he had been using to maintain his personal homepage. Lerdorf initially created PHP to display his résumé and to collect certain data, such as how much traffic his page was receiving. "Personal Home Page Tools" was publicly released on June 8, 1995 after Lerdorf combined it with his own Form Interpreter to create PHP/FI. Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language's name to the recursive initialism "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". The development team officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997 after months of beta testing. Public testing of PHP 3 began immediately and the official launch came in June 1998. Suraski and Gutmans then started a new rewrite of PHP's core, producing the Zend engine in 1999. They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel, which is actively involved with PHP development. In May 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released. On July 13, 2004, PHP 5 was released, powered by Zend Engine II. PHP 5 includes new features such as PHP Data Objects and more performance enhancements taking advantage of the new engine. For more information, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP
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