PHPFI

PHP/FI, commonly referred to as PHP/FI or PHP/FI, was the early implementation of the PHP language created by Rasmus Lerdorf in the mid-1990s. The FI component stands for Forms Interpreter, reflecting its core ability to process form data and generate dynamic content without requiring a separate CGI program for each action. PHP/FI combined embedded scripting within HTML with a small set of server-side tools, enabling developers to insert PHP code directly into web pages.

In practice, PHP/FI allowed developers to place PHP code between special tags in HTML, and it offered lightweight facilities for form handling, basic data manipulation, and simple database access. It could run as a CGI program or, in some configurations, as an Apache module, making it easier to build dynamic pages with relatively modest server setup. The project emphasized simplicity and rapid development, but it had a limited standard library and security considerations that reflected its era.

Legacy and impact: PHP/FI laid the groundwork for the evolution of PHP into a fuller language. It inspired the first major PHP release, which led to PHP 3 in the late 1990s, a rewrite by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski that established the modern PHP language we know today. The acronym PHP originated as “Personal Home Page” and later became a recursive acronym for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.” PHP/FI is therefore regarded as a formative predecessor to contemporary PHP.