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PHP Question

Does using PHP on the server side mean that you are NOT using something like Apache ? Is it a different animal?

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Dave Baldwin

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Ray Paseur

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F P

A bit much, but thorough,

PHP is an interpreted scripting language. It isn't compiled, but rather has a compiled C application which interprets what your PHP code tells it to do. There are some languages out there that compile PHP into C extensions, such as PHPNG, Phalcon, or HHVM with the Java JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler and make PHP even faster than what it is now. Apache, or whatever web server platform your using, does have integration points that pass data to the PHP as the request is fulfilled, and that is where the the super global $_SERVER array variables are stored.

PHP, the language's compiled binaries themselves, is compiled in C (and C++), and all binaries themselves are available to be downloaded from php.net. Once downloaded you can compile the binaries on any system's architecture whose kernel supports the C language. The installation of PHP is usually done in Windows with precompiled binaries, and most people are familiar with actually using precompiled objects instead of running the compiler on their system from scratch. This is why it's important to never use PHP binaries from an untrusted source and verify the checksum before using them to prevent malicious or incomplete/broken code from executing when you execute PHP.