“A great deal of Linux users have heard about PHP, the Hypertext
Preprocessor. PHP is the engine behind many dynamic Web sites,
including this one, Linux.com. Recently, a friend of mine asked
a few general questions about PHP. I thought that it would be
worthwhile to share my responses with our readers.“
“What is PHP?”
“PHP is a scripting language, much like Perl or Python, which is
embedded in HTML to create dynamic Web sites. PHP’s syntax is drawn
mostly from C and Perl. According to Netcraft, PHP is being used by
over a million domains on the Internet.”
“Is PHP a safer alternative to CGI?”
“You can run into security problems with some CGI
implementations. If you develop a CGI script in C, for example, you
could run into buffer overflows which lead to root exploits.
Similarly, you can run into security problems if malicious users
cause Perl scripts to invoke processes on the server system.”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
LinuxToday is a trusted, contributor-driven news resource supporting all types of Linux users. Our thriving international community engages with us through social media and frequent content contributions aimed at solving problems ranging from personal computing to enterprise-level IT operations. LinuxToday serves as a home for a community that struggles to find comparable information elsewhere on the web.
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