[javagram]

Edited: you might be thinking of C++ ?

I don’t think php ever compiled to C, based on a quick scan of the Wikipedia page. I thought it compiled to perl at one point but that doesn’t seem to be true either.

[solarkraft]

It never compiled to C, but it was first intended to only provide bindings to libraries that were written in C.

[wirrbel]

Iirc it was kind of like a templating language first. Imagine writing a cgi-bin c application and becoming tired of writing out HTML with printf statements.