Functions are similar to variables in the sense that they hold information within them and can be executed once or unlimited times by a PHP script. PHP has many functions already created with a specific job or function a pre installed function we have alreay worked with in this tutorial is echo(). You can create your own function too.
PHP was created in 1994 by a an IT wizard called Rasmus Lerdorf. PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page. PHP was created to help lerdorf track visitors that came to his personal website. As time went by he developed a scripting engine which allow flexability for other users to develop using PHP. In 1997 around 50 thousand websites were online using PHP. Two european developers then created an API (Application Programming Interface) for PHP when released PHP then became PHP3 in 1998. In 2002 PHP is now running on over 6+ milion across the internet. PHP4 was released in 2001 and contains the Zend Accelerator Engine to allow PHP scripting across multiple platforms.
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