An Introduction to PHP for Scientists and Engineers

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it. —Benjamin Disraeli i. Background The purpose of this book is provide an introduction to using a server-side programming language to solve some kinds of computing problems that cannot be solved with a client-side language such as JavaScript. The language is PHP (originally created in 1994 by Danish/Icelandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf as “Personal Home Page Tools” for dealing with his own web site). The PHP language does