[PHP-DEV] PHP compiler

[Jeremy S. Johnstone]

After seeing the conversation on the PHP archive idea (having a PHP
equivalent of a jar file), it reminded me of an idea I had a long time
ago. Has anyone ever thought of writing a PHP compiler which would
compile a PHP script into native machine code? If you have thought of
it, what stopped you from building it? I would be highly interested in
joining a team which wanted to push the limits of PHP by doing something
like this. I think this is the next logical step in the "PHP for
anything and everything" goal.
 
Jeremy