On Fri, May 26, 2006 at 02:17:11PM +0200, sfantar wrote: > > What are the differences between Perl and PHP?
The differences are far too many to list here. However, I'll list a few: Perl tends to run slightly faster. Your site's visitors probably won't notice any lag, though. PHP has a more anemic syntax. For instance, variable types are not really differentiated in syntax at all, which can lead to some ugly hacks every now and then. On the other hand, a simpler syntax can make it easier to do some simple things. PHP has more core functions (about ten times as many, give or take). This is part of the reason it's slower than Perl, in fact. This can make the language more accessible to beginners, since "programming" with PHP often involves nothing more than looking up the function you need to do your job. On the other hand, while there are an ungodly number of functions for doing the same tasks in very slightly different ways in some cases, in others the functions needed to do some very common and simple things are strangely absent, which can be frustrating. The ability to embed PHP directly in code and have the server parse it is more commonly available on cheap webhosts than the ability to do the same with Perl, though SSI does make up some of the difference. Since SSI is even more anemic than PHP, and doesn't really have "core functions", this can lead to some juggling to handle insertion of Perl output into the page that isn't necessary with PHP -- but if you need more than SSI to do it, you probably need to do it in the Perl scripts anyway for the sake of good programming practice. PHP tends to suffer more security issues than Perl. I'm pretty sure the function-heavy design of the language contributes to that, but I don't know for sure. Good, security-conscious programming techniques should allow you to work around such security issues without too much trouble, however, so unless you know of specific issues that are not acceptable to you, this probably shouldn't make your decision for you. There are more beginner-level quick-start scripts out there in PHP that are easily modified in trivial ways than there are in Perl, from what I've seen. PHP has the potential to teach you a lot of bad habits as a programmer if it's the first language you learn -- but it also has the potential to be a very easy introduction to programming, perhaps easier than Perl if you're going to use either only for web programming to begin with. Perl has some of the most informative programming communities filled with some of the most knowledgeable programmers you're likely to find on the Internet. I speak of people on this list such as Tom Phoenix and Randal Schwartz, and of a pretty big percentage of the population at perlmonks.org (I'm constantly surprised by the density of programming wisdom there). Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but I just haven't seen as much quality of PHP books as Perl books. Perl is far more fun. Okay, so I'm biased. Perl regular expressions are much much MUCH better than PHP regular expressions. Seriously, working with PHP regular expressions is a bit like trying to sort M&Ms with staples in my fingertips. It's not fun. Despite my bias, I end up using PHP more for web development than PHP. This is in large part because for the very simplest tasks, it's just easier. I could probably just use SSI and no PHP to do the very simple stuff that leads me to use PHP more often than Perl, but somehow SSI never occurs to me except when working with Perl. Perl is useful for a lot more than PHP, generally. If you want to learn a language that will prove useful outside of web development, you're probably better of with Perl. On the other hand, learning both eventually might be a good idea too. Is this list too long yet? I could go on forever. > > Which one is the best to build up a website? That depends on what you're going to do with the website. Some website development is more easily accomplished in PHP, some in Perl. Sometimes factors other than ease of development come into play, too. There's no simple answer to that question as you asked it. Regardless of which you decide to use, though, you're going to need to know some XHTML, and should know some CSS too. Perhaps you should start there, if you don't already know these things. There's a reasonably good reference website on those topics and more at http://www.w3schools.com that you can use to get up to speed. I occasionally refer to it myself, though I know XHTML and CSS better than almost anyone I know. > > There are more and more PHP-based websites. Except the fact that ISP > provide most of the time PHP/MySQL web hosting, why do people prefer > using PHP instead of Perl? It's really really easy to get started writing code in PHP and deploying it on a web server. Of course, this is also probably why there's more really awful PHP in use on simple websites than really awful Perl: the barrier to entry is lower, which means greater accessibility to people who don't really know what they're doing. Don't let that stop you, though. We all have to start somewhere. > > I would like to create one only using Perl. Consequently, what are the > most used modules for this purpose? Woah, nellie. There's no way to give a meaningful answer to this, really. I guess you might say CGI is the most-used module for web programming, and that may even be accurate, but it probably won't help you much unless it just happens to be the right answer for you by some kind of coincidence. It's typically better to come up with a site architecture and a plan for how you're going to implement it, then start looking for modules to fulfill your needs, rather than to get a list of commonly used modules and look for ways to develop your site using them. As much as it pains me to say it, I think you might be best served to start out with PHP, and come back to Perl when you have a bit more of a grasp of what you're doing with web programming. I've personally found that it seems to work better to start learning Perl for reasons other than web programming and to come back to web programming once some more general understanding of Perl is gleaned. I ended up learning PHP mostly to cover the web programming side of things while using Perl for simple system administration tasks and so on, until I got to a point where I knew Perl well enough to be able to apply it intelligently to web development. Some of this, I'm sure, has to do with the fact that the really good resources for Perl tend to be focused on tasks more related to systems administration and glue code, while web development resources for Perl are often written by people trying to make a fast buck who aren't necessarily experts. PHP resources aren't any better, but as I pointed out before it's easier to get started with PHP for web development if you're coming to it from knowing nothing at all. Of course, if I wasn't simultaneously learning Perl while learning PHP for web development, I'm pretty sure my PHP skills would have consistently sucked all along, too. Learning Perl taught me good habits that I've been able to apply to PHP. When learning PHP, I recommend you also learn another language pretty much at the same time, for some other purpose than web programming -- a language with a rich syntax and a very good community with very good free resources like PerlMonks. It'll make you a better PHP programmer. Perl is particularly suited to this, since before PHP was its own programming language, it was just a toolkit for web development built using Perl. That's my take on it. Someone else is sure to have a take that completely disagrees. -- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ] This sig for rent: a Signify v1.14 production from http://www.debian.org/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
