Whats a good book/resource for learning php?
 

Looking for something easy and light for php/apache/*nix beginners

I have the "PHP Developer's Cookbook", Sams Publishing -- I bought it in Austin, but I'm sure it's everywhere -- it's my favorite book now ;) The examples kick ass, and there is a lot of focus on execution speed... For example there's a way to grep an array in PHP -- in Perl maybe I was just ignorant but I usually used "foreach" to find stuff in an array... Soon I'll be a PHP junkie -- there's a PHP users group in San Diego, and I'm pretty sure it's one of the bigger groups in the world -- at one of the last meetings the author of PHP was there -- I may drive down to the next one to see what these geeks are up to.

Very cool

thanks! :thumbsup

You might want to check out http://www.php.com
Lot's of info..

It's php.net ignorant.

I'd go with SAMS' book also.

yeah, what he said..
http://php.net


SCUSE ME!!

I've read the Sams book as well, they also have a really good book called "Lean PHP4 in 24 Hours." It?s the heart of PHP broken down into 24 one hour lessons. But neither of those books are "light" or "easy"; both are better with outside programming knowledge and both go over a lot of stuff you won't need unless your writing a full program in PHP. You are probably looking for something more like "Essential PHP For Web Professionals." It?s by Christopher Cosentino and its a great book to get your feet wet with. It will show you how to get results in PHP and you can probably be done with it in a day or two (only a couple hundred pages). But like I said its a book to get your feet wet in, if your going to be doing serious programming you will need to follow it up, but it will introduce you to the basic fundamentals of PHP and show you how to make use of it.

Thanks all. At this point I'm not that interested in learning the ins and outs of php, I just want to pick up some tricks for automating some of my daily tasks instead of having to buy scripts to do it.