Preface

Table of Contents
About this Manual

PHP, which stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", is an open-source HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with some unique features thrown in. The main goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly. You can do many more with PHP. Read on, and see.

About this Manual

This manual is written in XML using the DocBook XML DTD, using DSSSL (Document Style and Semantics Specification Language) for formatting. The tools used for formatting HTML and TeX versions are Jade, written by James Clark and The Modular DocBook Stylesheets written by Norman Walsh. We use Microsoft HTML Help Workshop to generate the Windows HTML Help format of the manual.

You can download the actual manual in various languages and formats, including plain text, plain HTML, PDF, PalmPilot DOC, PalmPilot iSilo and Windows HTML Help, from http://www.php.net/docs.php. The manuals are updated as the source XMLs are changing.

You can find more information about downloading the XML source code of this documentation at http://cvs.php.net/. The documentation is stored in the phpdoc module.

If you find any errors in this manual, please report them using the bug system at: http://bugs.php.net/, and classify them as "Documentation Problem". This way we can follow every bug and track the things done to eliminate them from the documentation. Do not submit bug reports, or suggested additions using the annotation system.