General PHP Question

[Marcus Maximus]

Can PHP be used to develop computer applications that aren't web based. My friend had an interview recently and he said they used PHP to develop computer applications that weren't web based

[hschmitz]

The short answer is: yes

PHP can in principle be used to create applications that are not web based. When you install PHP on a Linux system you can run any PHP script just by typing
[code]php script.php[code]
The output is then written to the console. I sometimes use this for debugging purposes.

PHP can even be compiled with bindings to libraries like NCurses or Newt, which allow to create a simple user interface.

[Znupi]

Yes, it can be used for that, I made console-based servers and clients (using socket programming) in php under linux. And that's not all, ot has an extension for gtk+ which enables you to actually create windows under Linux (I didn't try this... yet ) and it has a win32 extension which enables you to create windows under Windows (didn't try this either :P)...

[dodz]

Yes it's Possible. Have to run PHP in the OS. It also could be virtual local host on the Desktop, like "localhost".