Instead of lots of information to output HTML (as seen in C or
Perl), PHP pages contain HTML with embedded code that does
"something" (in this case, output "Hi, I'm a PHP script!").
The PHP code is enclosed in special start and end giving out instructions <?php
and ?> that allow you to jump into and out of "PHP mode." What
distinguishes PHP from something like client-side JavaScript is that the code
is executed on the server, generating HTML which is then sent to the client.
The customer would receive the results of running that script, but would not
know what the underlying code was. You can even configure your web server to course
all your HTML files with PHP, and then there's really no way that users can
tell what you have up your sleeve. The best things in using PHP are that it is
extremely simple for a newcomer, but offers many advanced features for a
professional programmer. Don't be afraid reading the long list of PHP's
features. You can jump in, in a short time, and start writing simple scripts in
a few hours. Although PHP's development is focused on server-side scripting,
you can do much more with it. Read on, and see more in the What can PHP do?
section, or go right to the introductory tutorial if you are only attracted in
web programming.
