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Hiya,

Ok, I really need help now.
I want to learn Php programming.
I use windows but I guess the Php scripts I write will be running on Unix/Linux since most webservers of this world are Uniz/linux.

Now, my question is :

Since there are 2 Php versions (one for Windows and one for Unix/Linux) then will that cause any trouble ?
I mean, the tutorials out there, is there a windows tutorial version and a Unix/Linux tutorial version ?
If I read the Windows tutorials and the source codes from it then will they work in webservers under Unix/Linux and vice-versa ?

Frankly, I am stuck !
I do a search on google and many websites come-up and one says do this and another says do that.
So, what should I do ?
Where do you recommend I go to download and install Php ?
I know, I can always use my webhost's server to upload the Php codes and experiment there but that would mean me losing a lot of band-width while "experimenting" and that's why I preferred to download and install Php on my own computer (Windows) but I am worried that the codes that will work on Windows (my computer) might not work on Unix/Linux (my website).
Actually, I can't afford to learn 2 versions of Php (one WIndows and one Unix/Linux) because it is hard enough to learn one version (syntax) in the first-place.
So, what do you all suggest ?
I definietly need help here as I am totally stuck and don't know what to do.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by paradox814
Member Avatar for paradox814

if you are a newbie, then most everything will functions the same between linux and windows version of PHP. I did have some troubles with require way back when but that has been fixed.

Other than that the only thing I can think of is the file structure, for instance IIS (windows) your website will be in: c:\inetpub\wwwroot\
whereas in linux it will be in: /var/www/html or /www/domain-name etc etc, take note of the slash directions!

a website that i used when i started learning php was
http://www.phpfreaks.com
they have plenty of tutorials and examples of almost all the functions developed


you can download PHP from the author's site of: http://www.php.net

and yes you can keep submitting your site to the host and practice there, and so long as you are only usign text as your output then no you will use hardly any bandwidth, but for me i liked testing in my own computer so if you are usign windows then go ahead and install php and try it out there. The reason i recommend this is becuase some servers/host may or may not show errors. That is for security reasons, so if there is a syntax error and your host has all errors not shown you will not know where your mistake is, but if your are testing/debugging on your own computer then you can tell it to flag each and every single errors (and yes there are different levels of errors).

Good Luck!!!

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