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Introduction
B
ecause you’re here, you must be interested in writing PHP scripts.
Perhaps you just want to learn to program and you heard that PHP is
one of the easiest languages to learn. You’re right; it is. PHP is a good choice
for your first programming language.
Perhaps you’re developing an interactive Web site and you heard that PHP
is particularly good for Web site development. You’re right; it is. You can be
interacting with users at your Web site in no time at all.
Perhaps you have an application to write and you have a short timeline. You
heard that PHP is easy to learn. You’re right; it is. It was designed with easy to
learnas a specific design goal.
Perhaps you have some system administration, file manipulation, or data han-
dlingtasks to perform and you heard that PHP can handle these tasks. You’re
right; it can. PHP can do almost anything that you can think of, although it
draws the line at asking your boss for a raise. Well, wait a minute, PHP can
send e-mail. . . . Hmmm.
About This Book
Think of this book as a friendly introduction to programming in PHP. This
book is both an introduction to programming and an introduction to PHP.
The book starts with the basics of PHP, including how to tell whether you
need to install it. (Full installation instructions are included in Appendix A.)
The book describes the basic features of PHP with examples of their use. If
you have experience with programming, you can probably just skim this sec-
tion, but if you don’t, all the programming basics are here.
The book goes on to describe the most common uses of PHP. It shows how to
write scripts for Web sites, file manipulation, databases, and other common
tasks. It provides techniques and shortcuts and warns against common errors.
Both beginners and experienced programmers can write useful scripts for
many common applications in a very short time by using the information in
the application section (Part IV) of the book.
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