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PHP’s “doggie” easter egg

by Kevin Yank

(Via digg) An apparent easter egg in some versions of PHP will display a picture of a dog when any PHP script is loaded with a particular query string.

Try it here on SitePoint:

http://www.sitepoint.com/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42

It appears that different PHP versions have different animals embedded in them:

http://diggnation.com/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42
http://nadnerb.org/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42

Apparently the doggie also appears on the page generated by phpinfo() on April 1st every year.

This has been around awhile, but it’s news to me.

Some other query strings to try:

http://www.sitepoint.com/?=PHPE9568F34-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42
http://www.sitepoint.com/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42
http://www.sitepoint.com/?=PHPE9568F35-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42
http://www.sitepoint.com/?=PHPB8B5F2A0-3C92-11d3-A3A9-4C7B08C10000

If you’re concerned about the security implications of revealing your PHP version to the masses, be sure to disable the expose_php option in your php.ini file, which also makes this easter egg go away.

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This post has 16 responses so far

  1. Overheard at a recent PHP developers conference:

    “Alright folks, we can do one of two things. We can make PHP ready for the enterprise, or we can have a picture of a dog.”

     
  2. PHP “Easter Egg” WTF

    Sigh. I hate it when the PHP developers reinforce the “PHP is a toy” meme. The bloggers at SitePoint pointed this one out this weekend: http://www.eeggs.com/items/16437.html.

    Sure enough, it works: http://www.zend.com/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11…;

     
  3. […] Someone discovered that PHP has a few Easter Eggs. This has been spread via Digg and SitePoint. The SitePoint article points out the following graphics: […]

     
  4. Actually, these images are to be displayed in phpinfo() output on certain dates — April 1st, Easter and probably a few others. That they can be displayed on their own is a side effect.

     
  5. old news …

    One of the dogs is well known in the PHP community :
    http://suraski.net/blog/index.php?/archives/6-Scotch-is-gone.html

     
  6. Here’s another one
    http://www.latnet.lv/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42

     
  7. http://www.gamespot.com/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42

    I didn’t know Gamespot used PHP.

    This Easter Egg comes in handy. ;)

     
  8. PHP’s “doggie” easter egg

    An apparent easter egg in some versions of PHP will display a picture of a dog when any PHP script is loaded with a particular query string.

     
  9. […] I like to visit Sitepoint to see all the latest web news and programming tips. Today I was looking at their blog section and came across this neat post: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/01/08/phps-doggie-easter-egg/ […]

     
  10. You’ve been working with PHP for how many years Kevin and you still hadn’t heard of this til now ;)?

     
  11. Rasmus explanation is that originally he needed bake the PHP logo into the phpinfo script (since external file dependencies are a PITA). The query strings were made because some people have a sense of humor. Virtually every modern development tool has things like that. get over it.

     
  12. wtf.

     
  13. Well that’s just stupid. Oh look at that.. it’s my respect for PHP continuing to trickle away.

     
  14. God damn. You’re losing respect for PHP because of an eater egg? Please, don’t overreact or anything.

     
  15. […] PHP s doggie easter eggSitePoint, Australia - Jan 8, 2006… egg in some versions of PHP will display a picture of a dog when any PHP script is loaded … You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. … […]

     
  16. […] PHP s doggie easter eggSitePoint, Australia - Jan 8, 2006… egg in some versions of PHP will display a picture of a dog when any PHP script is loaded … You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. … […]

     

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