There are some major differences between PHP and C++. PHP is significantly less strict than C++ and it supports dynamic typich which allows you to assign values of different types to the same variable. There are also no pointers in PHP, instead you use a mechanism of references.

When you take a look on the object-oriented fact, PHP is kind of inferior to C++, but in the newer editions, PHP 5.X, PHP has started to think of it more and more.

If you compare the operators, there is a small difference there as well. In PHP you a string might return NULL if a substring is not found or 0 if the string starts with the substring. In C++ it’s not possible to distinguish 0 and Null.

One other difference is that PHP is far inferior to C++ in the aspect of performance. You shouldn’t make any complicated and sophisticated softwares with PHP since C++ is superior in the performance part. On the other hand, PHP is the standard in dynamic web page processing, which leads PHP to be almost more used then C++, therefore there are more resources available for PHP.