PHP without HTML
 

Does one really have to master HTML in order to do PHP work?

From what I gather about PHP, it seems to be in the background and finds a home embedded in HTML, yet a browser would never show its existence outright, right?

If you are using PHP to create a web site then understanding HTML is close to essential.
If you are using PHP for command line scripts or other none web stuff then you don't need to understand HTML

You mean, I can use PHP for web development nad not touch a tag of HTML??

No, it means you can use PHP as a scripting language that doesn't have anytning to do with a web site.

I gotta look into that! That's totally new to me.

So why has it been stuck on web development? Maybe it simply work well for web problem solving.

Because it has largely been designed for web development. PHP originally stood for "Personal Home Page".

PHP is a nice scripting language, and there is no requirement at all to use it in combination with HTML. I have written a fairly large application using a web interface, but over 90% is HTML free and contain normal functions. A lot of them for accessing MySQL.

In addition there are a few pieces of program which do not use the web interface at all and interface thru the command line. But the libraries I use are exactly the same.

jlinkels