PHP as a General-Purpose Language

Wednesday, Aug. 18 2004 | Author: Scrivs

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.

Articles like this seem to be cropping up a lot lately. Bodes well for the PHP fans out there. What I like about this one is the fact that he goes into making a lil program with PHP. Tired of reading just about the theory of making PHP greater than just a web-scripting language. Love to see it being done in practice.

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2 Responses for "PHP as a General-Purpose Language"

verbat

August 18th, 2004 at 3:00 pm
1

well, obviously you can write everything in php, just as you can in asm or bash.

The point that the author misses is why should I want to do such a thing?
Allen Holt

August 18th, 2004 at 4:14 pm
2

We’ve begun writing command-line scripts in PHP that plug effortlessly into our existing application framework (all PHP/MySQL)…really, really makes performing a lot of our server tasks and maintenance easier.

And BTW–nice site, Scrivs! Glad to see you’ve been busy. :)