PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.

A nice introduction to PHP by Stig Sæther Bakken can be found at http://www.zend.com/zend/art/intro.php on the Zend website. Also, much of the PHP Conference Material is freely available.

PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. This confuses many people because the first word of the acronym is the acronym. This type of acronym is called a recursive acronym. The curious can visit Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing for more information on recursive acronyms.

You can download PHP from any of the members of the PHP network of sites. These can be found at /. You can also use anonymous CVS to get the absolute latest version of the source. For more information, go to /anoncvs.php.