What is PHP — PHP Technical Interview Questions & Answers

What is PHP

What is PHP

  • What is PHP? Hypertext Preprocessor — a server language mixed into HTML. You can write HTML, then a PHP block that prints the student’s name, then more HTML. The visitor never has to know PHP ran.
  • Open source, huge hosting support, talks easily to MySQL. That is why so many college projects still use it. Modern PHP (8+) has types, attributes, and JIT — it is not ‘only 2005 echo pages’.
  • Trap: ‘PHP is dead’. Say where it is used (WordPress, Laravel) and that you write PHP 8, not PHP 4.

Technical Interview Tip: Server language inside HTML. Browser sees output only.

Code Examples for What is PHP

What is PHP — working example

<?php
// What is PHP
$scores = [80, 90, 70];
$avg = array_sum($scores) / count($scores);
echo "avg=" . number_format($avg, 1) . "\n";
foreach ($scores as $s) {
  if ($s >= 80) echo "high: $s\n";
}

What is PHP: scores array, print avg, then high marks. Say the output.

How to Explain What is PHP to an Interviewer

What does PHP stand for?

Hypertext Preprocessor Runs on the server