Is Perl obsolete or something?

Epsilon · 05-02-2003, 03:04 PM

Why aren't there more Perl posts here? I registered thinking I was going to get to read all kinds of cool Perl posts and answer Perl questions, but the posts in this forum are few and far between.

I'm in the process of learning PHP (and I very much like it so far), which is fairly easy for me since it's about 75% similar to Perl. But with Perl being my first programming love, I'm discouraged that I don't see more Perl lovers out there.

What's the deal? Is it becoming obsolete and nobody told me?

sde · 05-02-2003, 05:08 PM

do guh new is a perl guy =) .. i'm obsessed with php , and just know how to hack perl a little.

Epsilon · 05-02-2003, 08:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by sde
do guh new is a perl guy =) .. i'm obsessed with php , and just know how to hack perl a little.

Well I guess I'm the opposite. I'm obsessed with Perl and I know how to hack PHP a little. Actually, I'm learning PHP and I'm coming along quite well. But right now my knowledge of PHP is probably about 1/3rd my knowlege of Perl. Even though the two are very similar, there is a lot to learn in both.

I only wish there were more hardcore Perl enthusiasts hanging around here. I would have a lot more fun.

sde · 05-03-2003, 08:04 AM

i started to actively learn perl, but it seemed like i could do all that with php, .. is there things that perl does especially well compared to php?

Epsilon · 05-03-2003, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by sde
i started to actively learn perl, but it seemed like i could do all that with php, .. is there things that perl does especially well compared to php?

Not particularly. That's why I'm afraid it's losing popularity. Perl is an older, more mature language, but the fact is I think PHP can do all the same stuff, PHP does many things faster and better (especially with MySQL), and it's a little easier to program because it's more forgiving with regard to syntax errors.

Perl is still probably the best choice for tasks that don't involve serving web pages, like cleaning up files, rotating logs, various cron jobs, etc. But I think on the Web Perl is becoming a dinosaur.

redhead · 05-03-2003, 03:21 PM

The aspect is, that if you have to deal with alot of mengling with text, like a mailform, guestbook or something like that, then perl is your best choice, but if it is some dynamicaly created serverside page, then perl is too hard on the system compared to PHP.
Since most people want to keep the server load as low as posible, they'll use what's most forgiving.

sde · 05-03-2003, 05:48 PM

that confuses me a little .. i've compared string functions between php and perl and it seems like php has a bigger library.

sde · 05-03-2003, 06:20 PM

ah .. here's a big one. this thread has made me a little curious so i started to thumb through the perl 5 book again ..

Code:

stdin

PHP has no stdin function!! that is huge for running it from the shell. i don't doubt that will be implimented in the future... i hope.

sde · 05-04-2003, 10:42 AM

ya know, .. after thinking about it a little more, .. perl regular expressions is partly what makes php so powerful when it comes to text manipulation.

Epsilon · 05-04-2003, 08:04 PM

True. We'd be lost without regexps. PHP was built to take the many of the best attributes from several different languages, and I have to say the developers did a great job. Many things in PHP are faster and easier, like no need to parse forms before grabbing the variables (that's a wonderful feature!). Or even something as simple as loading lines from a text file into an array and chopping off the newline characters. In perl it takes four lines of code, in PHP it takes one.

The more I learn about PHP, the more I like it. I just have a hard time at the thought of giving up Perl programming, but it might be the best way to go, for Web applications, anyway. I don't regret having spent years studing and learning Perl, it has helped me to pick up PHP much quicker than if I was a newbie to coding.

jeffro · 05-19-2003, 11:55 AM

I hate to have to agree but I think that Perl on the web is on its way out also. Compared to PHP, Perl is becoming a dinosaur. HTML Mason narrows the playing field but there are very few people that actually know how to use it.

Personally I love Perl for system administration, that is what I mainly use it for. I will probabaly use Perl for personal sites just because I enjoy Perl and I don't feel like learning another language right now.

jeffro

Epsilon · 05-19-2003, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jeffro
Personally I love Perl for system administration, that is what I mainly use it for. I will probabaly use Perl for personal sites just because I enjoy Perl and I don't feel like learning another language right now.

I feel much the same way, but I've been working on my PHP skills for a couple months now and It's going well. The more I learn, the more I like PHP. It's certainly far easier to learn and somewhat easier (I should say 'faster') to code than Perl is.

A year from now I could see myself coding all my Web application entirely in PHP. But I will continue to use Perl for sys admin jobs, like cron jobs. PHP can't do that stuff, and I never bothered to learn shell scripting (yuk!).

idx · 06-03-2003, 06:21 AM

Can't agree more with what's been said. I use Perl on a daily basis for many sysadmin tasks, quick data crunching, file conversion, user/data sync, etc, but not for anything web-related anymore.

Last year I rewrote a tool (our corporate budget collection/modeling system) in PHP/mysql which I had hacked out the year before in Perl. (with text file storage. ug!) Besides getting rid of that horrible code, it was really nice to be using PHP. Its making this year's changes much easier.

Talleyrand · 06-15-2003, 12:14 AM

Hey, don't lose heart! Here's another PERLophile... I use it pretty much exclusively at work. I agree totally that PHP is far more suited for web apps, but our department is responsible for a lot more of our shopping cart backend processing, billing, and database administration... PERL fits the bill pretty well for us. I continue to be amazed by how much PERL can still do...

I don't know how others feel, but I always thought it would be a good first language to learn... I guess with the focus on OO programming these days, PERL may not be the best, but...

It takes a lot of the guesswork out of the syntax, which allows you to focus more on the logic of things, without having to fret over whether something is an int, a double, or whatever.... or having to convert a string to an int to multiply, etc ...

Anyway, I love it. Feel free to email me if you ever want to share PERL stories

Talleyrand