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PHP Manual

Hacking the Core of PHP

Those who know don't talk.
Those who talk don't know.

Sometimes, PHP "as is" simply isn't enough. Although these cases are rare for the average user, professional applications will soon lead PHP to the edge of its capabilities, in terms of either speed or functionality. New functionality cannot always be implemented natively due to language restrictions and inconveniences that arise when having to carry around a huge library of default code appended to every single script, so another method needs to be found for overcoming these eventual lacks in PHP.

As soon as this point is reached, it's time to touch the heart of PHP and take a look at its core, the C code that makes PHP go.

Table of Contents
24. Overview
25. Extension Possibilities
26. Source Layout
27. PHP's Automatic Build System
28. Creating Extensions
29. Using Extensions
30. Troubleshooting
31. Source Discussion
32. Accepting Arguments
33. Creating Variables
34. Duplicating Variable Contents: The Copy Constructor
35. Returning Values
36. Printing Information
37. Startup and Shutdown Functions
38. Calling User Functions
39. Initialization File Support
40. Where to Go from Here
41. Reference: Some Configuration Macros
42. API Macros

Hacking the Core of PHP

VI. Zend API

Hacking the Core of PHP