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The PHP language has been around for over 20 years and is clearly one of the most popular programming languages in the world. PHP is definitely the lingua-franca of the internet for server-side web programming.

While there is extensive user-documentation, the PHP language has always been missing a language specification. That is not to say a specification hasn’t been thought about or discussed. It is just that one has never really come to fruition.

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu stated “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. We are excited to announce the initial draft of a specification for PHP.

The existence of the specification was announced by Sara at OSCON 2014. The feedback to the announcement and the sample chapter was overwhelmingly positive.

And now, the entirety of the initial draft specification has been released to the world. It is hosted on a git repository at php.net and this repo will be mirrored to GitHub. Please have a read through the specification. Provide your pull requests and feedback. We hope and expect that this specification will evolve over time with the help of everyone who cares about the PHP language.

Thank you to the PHP group for taking the mantle and providing the infrastructure for hosting the further development of the specification and helping shepherd this as a truly community-owned and developed project.

Special thanks must be given to Rex Jaeschke, who lead the actual writing of the specification, and Drew Paroski, who was pivotal in the review effort and helped Rex shape the spec into its initial form. Thanks to Paul Tarjan, Sara Golemon, Fred Emmott, Josh Watzman and the rest of the HHVM team for their awesome contributions and feedback. And thank you to Stanislav Malyshev and Nikita Popov, who had an early look at the specification and provided valuable feedback.

Language specifications may not be flashiest things in the world of programming, but, in my humble opinion, this is an exciting day for the PHP language. Read on!!

Comments


  • Radu Murzea: Excellent news ! I'm amazed at how far along the progress already is. You guys just made my day :D
  • PHPUser: Well, that's good news. But don't mix up the internet and the web ;)
  • Over 20 years later, PHP now has a language specification. http://hhvm.com/blog/5723/announcing-a-specification-for-php: […] Over 20 years later, PHP now has a language specification. http://hhvm.com/blog/5723/announcing-a-specification-for-php […]
  • Alexandru Cobuz: Well php can get very fast if you are willing to learn how to make php extensions, it's close to c performance. Take a look into zephir and do benchmarks. Still it's a great thing that php decided to gain up speed since it's that popular all over the globe.
  • Jacek Kobus: one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
  • PHP 語言的定義 | Gea-Suan Lin's BLOG: […] HHVM 的人決定起草將 PHP 這個程式語言的規格定義出來：「Announcing a specification for PHP」。 […]
  • Developers: […] Announcing a specification for PHP […]
  • Daniele Filaretti: Good to hear that now there is also a specification! Independently, we developed a formal, executable semantics of PHP (www.phpsemantics.org) to be presented tomorrow at the ECOOP'14 conference. I wish we had this spec two years ago...!
  • James Dicken: PHP is definitely not the lingua-franca of the internet.
  • Sebs: What about nailing the spec own in a bunch of phpt files? I mean specs are executable these days and php has this phpt thingie. Its not the best but afaik its ok for the job.
  • Mathieu Arnold: Wait, wait, this is not April 1st!
  • "Announcing a specification for PHP | Die wunderbare Welt von Isotopp: […] Announcing a specification for PHP The PHP language has been around for over 20 years and is clearly one of the most popular programming languages in the world. PHP is definitely the lingua-franca of the internet. While there is extensive user-documentation, the PHP language has always been missing a language specification. That is not to say a specification hasn’t been thought… […]
  • Joel Marcey: Yeah, I thought this might cause a little bit of controversy after writing it, but then decided to leave it in. For server-side internet programming, I don’t think there is any doubt. Client-side, yeah, maybe a little more dubious. But all-in-all, PHP is right up there as one of the most used programming languages on the internet as a whole.
  • Announcing a specification for PHP | The WordPress C(h)ronicle: […] visit Hhvm […]
  • Paul Biggar: I wrote a critique on the spec - I thought you guys might find it interesting: http://blog.circleci.com/critiquing-facebooks-new-php-spec/
  • SD Times news digest: July 31, 2014—Google I/O source code, an official PHP spec, and custom Android fork for Project Ara « SD Times: […] HipHop Virtual Machine) technical writer Joel Marcey announced the released PHP spec in a blog post along with PHP core developer Sara Golemon’s announcement. The initial draft of the specification […]
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last | POPFIX - Celebrity, Tech, Sports News: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last | News around The World: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last – Jumbosky Money: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last | Wizeguys: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last | Protect Your PC | Tips, Advice, and support. Protect Your PC | Tips, Advice, and support.: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last | Tech-RSS.com: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last | QWERT.eu Blog: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • Yebaa.com | PHP gets a formal specification, at last: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • Facebook Shares More Open-Source Projects: […] busy week for Facebook on the open-source front, as the social network announced the release of a language specification for PHP, as well as the sharing of three JavaScript projects: Flux, immutable-js and […]
  • Facebook Shares More Open-Source Projects – Insertion Hoarder: […] week for Facebook on the open-source front, as the social network announced the release of a language specification for PHP, as well as the sharing of three JavaScript projects: Flux, immutable-js and […]
  • iwankgb: I can hardly believe my eyes.
  • PHP gets a formal specification, at last – Health and Fitness: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • Facebook Shares More Open-Source Projects | Breaking Authority News: […] busy week for Facebook on the open-source front, as the social network announced the release of a language specification for PHP, as well as the sharing of three JavaScript projects: Flux, immutable-js and […]
  • Joel Marcey: Paul, thank you very much for your well thought out piece on the PHP spec. We are super glad you found the spec to be of generally high quality. We knew that it would not be perfect; and that was ok with us. We really want this to be community effort moving forward to make the spec more awesome. We provided the jumping off point to make that happen.
  • SD Times news digest: July 31, 2014—Google I/O source code, an official PHP spec, and custom Android fork for Project Ara »: […] HipHop Virtual Machine) technical writer Joel Marcey announced the released PHP spec in a blog post along with PHP core developer Sara Golemon’s announcement. The initial draft of the specification […]
  • Facebook Shares More Open-Source Projects | SociaNews Online: […] busy week for Facebook on the open-source front, as the social network announced the release of a language specification for PHP, as well as the sharing of three JavaScript projects: Flux, immutable-js and […]
  • What's that? A PHP SPECIFICATION? Surely you're joking, Facebook | Hihid News: […] that this specification doesn’t aim to fix any of PHP’s quirks and problems. In announcing the draft, Facebook’s Joel Marcey described PHP as “one of the most popular programming […]
  • PHP Domain Parser Adds Support for IPv6 | Deploy360 Programme: […] PHP community recently announced the release of the initial draft specification for PHP. This is an important step in the development of any open […]
  • Formal Semantics of PHP presented at ECOOP’14 and Facebook’s PHP spec | Daniele Filaretti: […] while we were attending the conference we heard the news about the release of Facebook’s new PHP specification. We are in the process of reading it and comparing it with our own work and we’ll write a […]
  • Facebook Shares More Open-Source Projects | CloudBackupCheap.com: […] week for Facebook on the open-source front, as the social network announced the release of a language specification for PHP, as well as the sharing of three JavaScript projects: Flux, immutable-js and […]
  • GIXtools - PHP gets a formal specification, at last: […] developers who oversee the language, including engineers from Facebook, are assembling a document that details how PHP should work, which sets the stage for building additional […]
  • PHP, finalmente le specifiche | Edit - Il Blog di HTML.it: […] | HHVM_ajaxurl_ = "http://blog.html.it/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php";var _tag_ = 'noalert';var […]
  • El nuevo PHP: […] con esto, hace sólo algunos días tuvimos la interesante noticia de que el equipo de HHVM publicó un primer borrador para una especificación de lenguaje para PHP, lo que cobra especial relevancia […]
  • Mike Grice: The lingua franca of the Internet is BGP.
  • Facebook Shares More Open-Source Projects | Dudelizious.com: […] busy week for Facebook on the open-source front, as the social network announced the release of a language specification for PHP, as well as the sharing of three JavaScript projects: Flux, immutable-js and […]
  • Nitesh Khandelwal: That's really a great news about PHP specification for us because PHP is one of the most popular language in the world around past 20 years and PHP always missing language specification.
  • 30 de Julho de 2014 – Um dia emocionante para todos os programadores PHP. | echo $olamundo_php;: […] originalmente em 30 de julho de 2014 por Joel […]
  • Nadir: Awesome news. Someone had to do it, and I am glad to see that a company with the weight of FB did it. Others have to react & move.
  • PHP Spec – a dream come true | PHP Information: […] blog is supposed to be about some long-term dreams, and in this case it was the dream come true – Sara Golemon and the excellent Facebook team made a draft PHP spec and with some paint …read […]
  • » PHP Spec cjhaas.com: […] know I’m late to the game but this is good […]