I have a PHP vs. Perl question for a hobby project of mine. Which would be
the better language to use if I wanted to go out to a particular web page
and parse the table that's there? How about if each row in the HTML table
contains a link to another Web page which has information I want to grab?
(BTW, the page I'm thinking of is the Catalog of Extrasolar Planets by Jean
Schneider, at http://www.obspm.fr/encycl/catalog.html.)
FYI, I've never done any Web programming.
Thanks,
Scott
Scott E. Robinson
SWAT Team
UTC Onsite User Support
RR-690 -- 281-654-5169
EMB-2813N -- 713-656-3629
George
Schlossnagle To: "Dan Muey" <[EMAIL
PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: "R. Joseph Newton" <[EMAIL
PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Php perl?
04/02/03 09:18 AM
On Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 09:52 AM, Dan Muey wrote:
> This is a cool thread. I'm glad everyone is staying so peaceful about
> It. That's another thing I don't like about PHP is that if I was having
> this discussion with a PHP person thet'd be insulting me for even
> considering
> something else.
I think that sort of zealousness exists in many languages - Perl
included. PHP has a much larger foothold in the web market than Perl,
and has a shallower learning curve, so it has a large 'unwashed masses'
factor at the bottom.
BTW, I am a 'PHP person' (I'm a core developer on the PHP project), and
I run a company that does almost exclusively Perl programming for the
web, using Apache:::ASP. So that's my spin and where I'm coming from.
> If your wondering about reliability and stability and fuunctionality ::
>
> Perl has been around a long time.
Yes. And Perl in general is much more mature. However if you are
looking at HTML-embedding solutions (embperl, Apache::ASP, etc.), they
are much less mature than Perl as a whole and thus Pelr in that domain
is still a bit krufty.
> Perl powers a huge part of the internet, networks, etc...
PHP has a much larger marketshare for web scripting though.
>
> I even use it on my home computer to keep track of scheduling, data,
> email etc..
>
> Perl has greater functionality than PHP.
I would personally agree with this, but this statement has high FUD
value. It's about comfort level. There are many things that are
easier to do in PHP than in Perl, and vice-versa. There aren't too
many things I have needed to do that just couldnt be done in either of
the languages.
>
> If you want it to run like mod_php use mod_perl. Someone said that not
> using mod_perl "increases dramatically the startup". Yeah by like
> zillionth of a second.
I agree this is bogus. You serve multiple requests per child, so the
startup cost is amortized out. I should note that mod_php != mod_perl.
They have distinct, non-overlapping feature sets. PHP is by original
construction a templating language that allows embedding code directly
in HTML pages. mod_perl by itself is no such beast, but is instead an
embedded interpreter in apache, exposing all the apache module hooks
via Perl (similar thing exists in PHP, but it's in beta).
To 'do what mod_php does', you need to run something on top of
mod_perl, like embperl or Apache::ASP.
>
> In fact if I run a plain old non mod_perl cgi and the some PHP thing,
> both doing the same
> Exact thing, say parsing a form and emailing it to one person, Then
> I'd bet that
> They were one of two things :: very close to each other in speed, or
> Perl would be faster.
>
> Now add the mod_perl and all is well.
PHP and mod_perl benchmark out about the same by all accounts (Michael
Radwin's slides re: choosing PHP for Yahoo! have some nice graphs).
>
> Basically the realiability is the same on both. Does PHP do what you
> need? Who knows. Does Perl?
> You bet you sweet mother it does and a lot more than you probably ever
> thought of.
More FUD. PHP certainly can do what you want to do. The question
(IMHO) is what language are you most comfortable with. If you're
starting from scratch, PHP is really hard to beat as a solution to the
web problem. It's simple and intuitive and has a shallow learning
curve. OTOH, if you already know Perl, and especially if you are
building on a legacy code-base, Perl is a fine solution as well.
George
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
