What do you do with your PHP code before executing it? [closed]

3 years ago I finished my training as an IT specialist and one of the examinors asked this question.

I gave him many answers on what I thought is correct (like writing, testing, "not compiling because it is a scripting language" ... whatever?) but he never resolved it and he was really mad at the end. To this day, this question concerns me and no one I asked knows an answer on it.

What would you have answered? Any ideas what's the correct answer?