Re: Comparison PHP to Perl

From: Al (php.newsgroups_at_allysays.com)
Date: 01/06/04 

To: php-general@lists.php.net
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 19:08:55 +1100

"Warren Vail" <warren@vailtech.net> wrote in message
news:03ac01c3d421$a7b879c0$6401a8c0@comcast.net...
> I am looking for a comparison of features supported by PHP vs those
> supported by Perl.
>
[snip]

Ah, this old chestnut.

As someone who wrote a major application in Perl, and now (mostly) uses PHP,
I can only reiterate what's been said a thousand times before: the language
you choose depends on what features you want and the type of script you'll
be writing.

You've only identified session support as a requirement, and although PHP
has native session support, Perl has similar functionality available via the
Apache::Session CPAN module. Actually, this is true for almost all extra
native functionality in PHP that Perl does not support -- it's there in
Perl, but you need to download a CPAN module for it. Another example of this
is PHP's native mail( ) support. (For the uninitiated, CPAN
[http://www.cpan.org] is a fantastic collection of standardised Perl
extensions with an easy install script that has evolved over many years).

Unfortunately the same does not apply for PHP: although it has an impressive
array of built-in functions (especially compared to Perl's paltry offering),
if a particular feature is not handled natively then you'll probably have to
write your own code to implement it. Although there *is* a CPAN equivalent
in PHP called PEAR [http://pear.php.net] that boasts a decent number of
modules (most of which are still in early development stages), PHP simply
hasn't been around long enough attract as much module development as Perl.

So in summary: list all the features you need and if PHP supports them all
(or if a few are missing and PHP's ease-of-use and other benefits outweigh
the cons) then go with PHP, otherwise take another look at Perl. For a list
of PHP's features, take a look at the documentation ... it's very
user-friendly. [http://www.php.net/manual/en/]

You'll also find a ridiculously large number of articles online comparing
PHP to Perl, just do a Google search such as:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=php+perl+comparison]

Hope it helps,

Al

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