Hour 4. The Building Blocks of PHP

In this hour, you will get your hands dirty with some of the nuts and bolts of the PHP scripting language. Those of you new to programming may feel overwhelmed at times, but don't worry you can always refer back to this hour later on. Concentrate on understanding the concepts rather than memorizing the features covered.

If you're already an experienced programmer, you should at least skim this hour's lesson, as it covers a few PHP-specific features.

In this hour, you will learn

• About variables what they are, why you need to use them, and how to use them

• How to define and access variables

• About data types

• About some of the more commonly used operators

• How to use operators to create expressions

• How to define and use constants