# What is PHP syntax highlighting?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-php-syntax-highlighting/103971>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [April 16, 2002, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-php-syntax-highlighting/103971 "2002-04-16T16:42:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2002, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-php-syntax-highlighting/103971/1 "2002-04-16T16:42:29Z")

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Apologies if this has been asked thousands of times before, but I couldn’t find it in the FAQs, and I can’t search for it as the search function only allows 4+ character searches.

Thanx.

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**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\
**Post date:** [April 16, 2002, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-php-syntax-highlighting/103971/2 "2002-04-16T18:13:07Z")

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I’m guessing you read about this on the [vBcode page](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/misc.php?action=bbcode)?  
It’s a special vB code option to highlight syntax keywords for the PHP programming language. Why PHP only, and not other programming languages like Ada, Pascal, Fortran, C, C++, Java, etc…? Because vBulletin (the software product) is written in PHP.  
You can read more about that scripting language [here](http://www.php.net/).