I've used Phalanger in one of my side projects and it works really well. The PHP library I was using (http://code.google.com/p/phpsc2replay/ if you're interested) isn't simple but there were only a few minor modifications required to get it up and running as a full .NET library.
Only complaint I'd have would be that it locks up Visual Studio every so often on large PHP files. Apart from that it pretty much works as advertised.
And to get access to C# libraries / language features in PHP. It also allows PHP applications to run on top of the CLR, which can offer some performance improvements on Windows Servers at least.
I know the guy who wrote it originally. A real hacker. He wrote it way before this DLR extensions, I think it was even in .NET 1.0 and it was already sort of usable. He knew a lot from Rotor (the open sourced part of .NET) and he was using it to hack the internal memory structures (ie. the Object structure) of .NET without reflection
(At least) two of the guys who have worked on Phalanger in the past are at Microsoft now. One worked on the DLR and IronRuby and is now part of the C# compiler team. I think the other is working on the CLR JIT.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] threadOnly complaint I'd have would be that it locks up Visual Studio every so often on large PHP files. Apart from that it pretty much works as advertised.
Like .NET applications never have had security holes.