PHP, which stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" is a widely-used Open Source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. Its syntax draws upon C, Java, and Perl, and is easy to learn. The main goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated webpages quickly, but you can do much more with PHP.
This manual consists primarily of a function reference, but also contains a language reference, explanations of some of PHP's major features, and other supplemental information.
You can download this manual in several formats at http://www.php.net/download-docs.php. More information about how this manual is developed can be found in the 'About the manual' appendix. If you are interested in the history of PHP, visit the relevant appendix.
We highlight the currently most active people on the manual frontpage, but there are many more contributors who currently help in our work or provided a great amount of help to the project in the past. There are a lot of unnamed people who help out with their user notes on manual pages, which continually get included in the references, the work of whom we are also very thankful for. All the lists provided below are in alphabetical order.
The following contributors should be recognized for the impact they have made and/or continue to make by adding content to the manual: Jouni Ahto, Alexander Aulbach, Daniel Beckham, Stig Bakken, Jesus M. Castagnetto, Ron Chmara, John Coggeshall, Simone Cortesi, Markus Fischer, Wez Furlong, Sara Golemon, Rui Hirokawa, Brad House, Moriyoshi Koizumi, Rasmus Lerdorf, Andrew Lindeman, Stanislav Malyshev, Rafael Martinez, Yasuo Ohgaki, Derick Rethans, Sander Roobol, Egon Schmid, Thomas Schoefbeck, Sascha Schumann, Lars Torben Wilson, Jim Winstead, Jeroen van Wolffelaar, and Andrei Zmievski.
The following contributors have done significant work editing the manual: Stig Bakken, Hartmut Holzgraefe, and Egon Schmid.
The currently most active maintainers are: Mehdi Achour, Friedhelm Betz, Vincent Gevers, Aidan Lister, Nuno Lopes, and Tom Sommer.
These people have also put a lot of effort into managing user notes: Daniel Beckham, Victor Boivie, Jesus M. Castagnetto, Nicolas Chaillan, Ron Chmara, James Cox, Sara Golemon, Zak Greant, Szabolcs Heilig, Oliver Hinckel, Hartmut Holzgraefe, Rasmus Lerdorf, Andrew Lindeman, Maxim Maletsky, James Moore, Sebastian Picklum, Derick Rethans, Sander Roobol, Damien Seguy, Jason Sheets, Jani Taskinen, Yasuo Ohgaki, Philip Olson, Lars Torben Wilson, Jim Winstead, Jared Wyles, and Jeroen van Wolffelaar.