New Project -- PHP or Perl?
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New Project -- PHP or Perl?
I am starting a new project which will be to design a thirdparty schedule maker that syncs with the course schedule information from my university. The most complicated part of the project is that it is going to have to parse information from the online course catalog/schedule of classes before it can manipulate that data. I don't have access to the universities database.
I know some PHP, but not much. I would not be heartbroken to hear that I need to adopt another language to carry out this task, so I ask: what is the most efficient language in which to program this? I have heard that PHP is easier, but Perl is more powerful. The program will depend on a lot of server-side programming, and very few tags embedded within the HTML documents.
I'm also sort of leaning towards Perl because the university does most of their programming in Perl, and it wouldn't hurt to have experience should I try to get a job there.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
I know some PHP, but not much. I would not be heartbroken to hear that I need to adopt another language to carry out this task, so I ask: what is the most efficient language in which to program this? I have heard that PHP is easier, but Perl is more powerful. The program will depend on a lot of server-side programming, and very few tags embedded within the HTML documents.
I'm also sort of leaning towards Perl because the university does most of their programming in Perl, and it wouldn't hurt to have experience should I try to get a job there.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
- Chris Corbyn
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If you're *primarily* pulling data from web pages and manipulating it Perl walks all over PHP since it's RegExp implementation is top-notch (they essential *are* the regex people
).
PHP can do all the regex stuff to some extent but I'd possibly actually use perl depending upon what else needs to be done. If you know perl better, go with perl.
/me prepares for flames
PHP can do all the regex stuff to some extent but I'd possibly actually use perl depending upon what else needs to be done. If you know perl better, go with perl.
/me prepares for flames
- Buddha443556
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I agree.d11wtq wrote:If you're *primarily* pulling data from web pages and manipulating it Perl walks all over PHP since it's RegExp implementation is top-notch (they essential *are* the regex people).
PHP can do all the regex stuff to some extent but I'd possibly actually use perl depending upon what else needs to be done. If you know perl better, go with perl.
/me prepares for flames
I'd go with Perl if I was going to be processing any really large data sets too.
- Christopher
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I would say go with Perl, it's the back end king! No scripting language can manipulate complex text based operations better. I would not use PHP for anything processor intense. You have to understand each language to understand that. In short, PHP is a web based scripting engine that gives you core tools and basic sort cut functions to do many different things! Perl on the other hand, give you the compiler and allows you to create functions based on your needs.
Perl does supply a vast library of some of the best extension type functions, but they are not part of Perl's core. Why is Perl's idea better? It's better because Perl developers love to reinvent the wheel, trust me there is always a faster, better way to do something. Most PHP developers use core functions to do simple tasks and never take time to find faster ways of doing things. Many core PHP functions are very slow compared to ginny rigging your own scripting based function that are core equivalents.
One simple difference, Perl's pack() and unpack() functions can do well over one hundred things that PHP uses one hundred different functions for! Yes PHP pack() and unpack() are very different than Perl's. Ruby and Python are also wonderful, I think Perl, Ruby and Python are more developing type languages where PHP is a scripting based language, any ways Perl is still my favorite + it's been paying my bills for years.
pif
Perl does supply a vast library of some of the best extension type functions, but they are not part of Perl's core. Why is Perl's idea better? It's better because Perl developers love to reinvent the wheel, trust me there is always a faster, better way to do something. Most PHP developers use core functions to do simple tasks and never take time to find faster ways of doing things. Many core PHP functions are very slow compared to ginny rigging your own scripting based function that are core equivalents.
One simple difference, Perl's pack() and unpack() functions can do well over one hundred things that PHP uses one hundred different functions for! Yes PHP pack() and unpack() are very different than Perl's. Ruby and Python are also wonderful, I think Perl, Ruby and Python are more developing type languages where PHP is a scripting based language, any ways Perl is still my favorite + it's been paying my bills for years.
pif
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zipdisk2003
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