[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]
“I’m going to briefly tangent away from my usual HOWTO-style
column, and get a bit teary-eyed and philosophical. There’s
been a lot of hype lately about PHP and Perl: one columnist claims
that PHP is killing Perl, another one claims that PHP is overrated,
and the newsgroups are filled with “PHP kicks Perl’s [butt]” and
“Perl dusts PHP” postings. Since both of these languages are
so crucial to Web automation, I thought I’d take article and help
cut through the zeal and look at these languages.”
“Just for the record, I’ve used Perl for many years and PHP for
a little over a full year. I’ve created large applications in Perl,
and I’ve created mediumishly-large applications in PHP. I know Perl
like the back of my hand, but I also know PHP pretty well. Nine
times out of ten I’ll make a web application in Perl instead of
PHP, but that’s my choice, and the reasons for that will unfold
below.”
“PHP and Perl are both interpreted languages, which means they
aren’t compiled like C or Java. Instead of being compiled, they are
read by an interpreter, which instructs the computer to “Do the
Right Thing” (patent pending). Both languages can be embedded in
HTML documents, and both languages have Apache module-based
interpreters available.”