PHP(Hypertext Preprocessor) is awidely used,general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document. As a general-purpose programming language, PHP code is processed by an interpreter application in command-line mode performing desired operating system operations and producing program output on its standard output channel. It may also function as a graphical application. PHP is available as a processor for most modern web servers and as standalone interpreter on most operating systems and computing platforms.
PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 and has been in continuous development ever since. The main implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group and serves as the de facto standard for PHP as there is no formal specification. PHP is free software released under the PHP License.
PHP（Hypertext Preprocessor）是一種在計算機上運行的腳本語言，主要用途是在于處理動態(tài)網(wǎng)頁，也包含了命令行運行接口（command line interface），或者產(chǎn)生圖形用戶界面（GUI）程序。
PHP最早由Rasmus Lerdorf在1995年發(fā)明，而現(xiàn)在PHP的標準由PHP Group和開放源代碼社區(qū)維護。PHP以PHP License作為許可協(xié)議，不過因為這個協(xié)議限制了PHP名稱的使用，所以和開放源代碼許可協(xié)議GPL不兼容。
PHP的應用范圍相當廣泛，尤其是在網(wǎng)頁程序的開發(fā)上。一般來說PHP大多運行在網(wǎng)頁服務(wù)器上，通過運行PHP代碼來產(chǎn)生用戶瀏覽的網(wǎng)頁。PHP可以在多數(shù)的服務(wù)器和操作系統(tǒng)上運行，而且使用PHP完全是免費的。根據(jù)2007年4月的統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)，PHP已經(jīng)被安裝在超過2000萬個網(wǎng)站和100萬臺服務(wù)器上。