Linux Journal: PHP as a General-Purpose Language

“If PHP is your scripting language of choice when it comes to
developing dynamic Web sites, you probably have grown to love its
immediacy and power. An estimated ten million Web sites use at
least some PHP scripting to generate their pages.

“Although most people use PHP primarily as a Web development
scripting system, it possesses all the characteristics of a proper
general-purpose language that can be useful in a variety of other
environments. In this article, I illustrate how it’s possible to
use the command-line version of PHP to perform complex shell
operations, such as manipulating data files, reading and parsing
remote XML documents and scheduling important tasks through
cron…”

Complete
Story