The Semantics of PHP

This page describes the semantics of the PHP programming language. As of date there does not seem to any literature or any other form of information on the semantics of the PHP programming language. This page, therefore, is going to be an attempt to offer such information.

See Also

For a quick, concise reference to terms used through out this page, see [ php.glossary.html ] which contains meta-linguistic terms, lexemes, and keyword definitions based on the C++ glossary found at [ c++.glossary.html ] with the appropriate adaptations to PHP.

PHP Semantics

The PHP programming language was found to be a rather quite large programming language in terms of how much functionality is put in place for a programming language. There really is not a truely defined semantics for the language. However, here are some notes partial on some semantics that could be dug up.

Variables

• The O("$") in the variable line tells us that PHP allows us to reference the value of a variable whose name is stored in some other variable. To see this in action, visit [ php_samples/variable_variables.php ] for details.

Functions

• In PHP, function names are case-insensitive. The follow function names are all valid for the same function through the eyes of PHP:

  foobar, FooBar, fooBar, FOObar, etc

• If the indentifier of the function is led with "&", the function will return values by reference.

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