About this manual

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 web pages 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.

This manual includes information covering the two most recent major releases of PHP (versions 7 and 8). Information about extensions that are no longer included with those versions of PHP and changes to functions in earlier versions is not included. Archives of older versions of the manual that document previous releases of PHP are available from the "More documentation" section on the » "Documentation" page of the PHP website.

You can download this manual in several formats at » https://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.

Authors and Contributors

There is a large number of contributors who currently help in our work or have provided a great amount of help to the project in the past. There are also a lot of unnamed people who help out with user notes on manual pages, which continually get included in the references, the work of whom we are also very thankful for. All of the lists provided below are in alphabetical order.

Authors and Editors

The following contributors should be recognized for the impact they have made and/or continue to make by adding content to the manual: Bill Abt, Jouni Ahto, Alexander Aulbach, Stig Bakken, George Peter Banyard, Christoph M. Becker, Daniel Beckham, Nilgün Belma Bugüner, Jesus M. Castagnetto, Ron Chmara, Sean Coates, John Coggeshall, Simone Cortesi, Peter Cowburn, Antony Dovgal, Daniel Egeberg, Markus Fischer, Wez Furlong, Sara Golemon, Rui Hirokawa, Brad House, Pierre-Alain Joye, Etienne Kneuss, Moriyoshi Koizumi, Rasmus Lerdorf, Andrew Lindeman, Stanislav Malyshev, Justin Martin, Rafael Martinez, Rick McGuire, Moacir de Oliveira Miranda Júnior, Kalle Sommer Nielsen, Yasuo Ohgaki, Philip Olson, Richard Quadling, Derick Rethans, Rob Richards, Georg Richter, Sander Roobol, Egon Schmid, Thomas Schoefbeck, Sascha Schumann, Dan Scott, Masahiro Takagi, Yoshinari Takaoka, Yannick Torres, Michael Wallner, Lars Torben Wilson, Jim Winstead, Jeroen van Wolffelaar and Andrei Zmievski.

The following contributors have done significant work editing the manual: Stig Bakken, Gabor Hojtsy, Hartmut Holzgraefe, Philip Olson and Egon Schmid.

User Note Maintainers

The currently most active maintainers are: Daniel Brown, Nuno Lopes, Felipe Pena, Thiago Pojda and Maciek Sokolewicz.

These people have also put a lot of effort into managing user notes: Mehdi Achour, Daniel Beckham, Friedhelm Betz, Victor Boivie, Jesus M. Castagnetto, Nicolas Chaillan, Ron Chmara, Sean Coates, James Cox, Vincent Gevers, Sara Golemon, Zak Greant, Szabolcs Heilig, Oliver Hinckel, Hartmut Holzgraefe, Etienne Kneuss, Rasmus Lerdorf, Matthew Li, Andrew Lindeman, Aidan Lister, Hannes Magnusson, Maxim Maletsky, Bobby Matthis, James Moore, Philip Olson, Sebastian Picklum, Derick Rethans, Sander Roobol, Damien Seguy, Jason Sheets, Tom Sommer, Jani Taskinen, Yasuo Ohgaki, Jakub Vrana, Lars Torben Wilson, Jim Winstead, Jared Wyles and Jeroen van Wolffelaar.