What does PHP stand for?

1. The Original Meaning: Personal Home Page

PHP was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. He initially wrote a set of scripts in the C programming language to manage his own online resume and track visits to his website. He called these tools "Personal Home Page Tools" (often referred to as PHP Tools).

At this stage, it was not a full programming language but a simple scripting engine.

2. The Current Meaning: PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

As more people began using and contributing to PHP, it grew into a full-fledged scripting language. To reflect this new, more professional identity, the name was changed in 1997.

The new name is a recursive acronym.

• Recursive Acronym: An acronym where one of the letters stands for the acronym itself.

So, PHP stands for:

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

Let's break down this name, as it perfectly describes what the language does:

• Hypertext: Refers to HTML, the foundation of web pages.
• Preprocessor: This is the key. It means PHP code is processed on the server before the result is sent to the user's browser. The server executes the PHP scripts, often pulling data from a database, and "pre-processes" it into plain HTML that any browser can understand.

In a Nutshell:

• Originally: Personal Home Page (a set of tools for a single website).
• Today: PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (a recursive acronym for a server-side scripting language).