If you want opinions and comparisons about Perl and PHP, just Google for it. There are a billion or so web pages and newgroup postings on the subject. If you have specific questions about how Perl handles various problems, come back and ask them here.

In the bad old days, Perl-based CGIs were started by spawning a new interpreter for each request. As you might imagine, this was very expensive and not very scalable. You could be parsing a multi-megabyte flat-file, but start up time would still be the limiting factor for speed. These days, you can use mod_perl to embed the interpreter right into Apache (there are similar solutions for other web servers). Though there are places with a lot of legacy scripts (like where I work) that simply can't run under mod_perl.

As far as the embedded interpeter goes, mod_perl and mod_php do the same thing for their respective language (mod_perl also gives you access to the underlieing Apache API--I'm not sure if mod_php does this). PHP as a language is basically Perl with all the fun parts taken out. Some would argue that the "fun parts" make Perl hard to learn. Even so, whenever I dabble in PHP, I always seem to knock against a problem that is easily solved in Perl, but takes a lot of hoop-jumping to do in PHP, despite the apparent similarities. Admittedly, this may have more to do with my relative experiance with Perl and PHP.

Don't make the mistake of saying CGI == Perl. CGI is just a standard for how http servers translate data coming from an http client to a user-space program. Any time you see a server-side program take over generating a page, it's using CGI or something that looks suspiciously similar.

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I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

PHP is a web-oriented language, Perl is a full blown programming language (PHP claims to be a general use programming language. It absolutely is not.) Perl does everything PHP does and more. PHP is easier to learn, Perl is easier to get things done with. Perl's often much faster. PHP was made by someone who knew, but clearly didn't fully understand Perl.

If want something PHP-ish, but with Perl, have a look at PLP.

Once you've got Apache with mod_perl running, installing PLP is a matter of minutes (Install the module, copy and paste a few lines to your config, restart Apache).

Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }

I've done quite a bit of work with PHP. Still do a fair amount. It is great for the majority of web work out there, because it does a lot of the work for you. It is a language specifically tailored for web work, with all sorts of functions in the standard library that simplify stuff like connecting to a database, reading form input, and so on. Still, one can get into the guts of things a little bit, so you don't feel like you're being hedged into doing things a certain way.

But that's not good enough for me.

Like, I suspect, a lot of other Perl Hackers, I like to have an insane amount of control over my apps. I like to be able to have my web applications interact seamlessly with any other utility I've written, and to use the same libraries. PHP sucks for pretty much anything but web-application stuff, so part of the reason all my own web stuff is written in Perl is that I can have it do what I want without trying to fit the square peg of PHP into the round hole of sysadminning or whatever.

As far as a strict comparison of CGI.pm (and other perl CGI tools) to PHP, I would have to say they are comparable. If you are comfortable with Perl, you'll prefer it to PHP. If you know a bit of Perl, but aren't fluent, you might prefer PHP. PHP was designed for the web, and it does its job pretty well.

LAI

...the reason all my own web stuff is written in Perl is that I can have it do what I want without trying to fit the square peg of PHP into the round hole of sysadminning or whatever.

So what you are saying is perl is like silly putty, it can fit into all shapes of holes and bounces back when you drop it? :)

I'm stuck with PHP for most stuff in my current job. It sucks. I hate it. Sure its easy to learn if you enjoy looking up function names on PHP.net all the time. Function name for everything is a bad language design.

Contrast to Perl which gives you a set of tools such as embedded regexes which automatically make a plethora of PHP text processing functions obsolete (Yes you can use Perl Regexes in PHP, it however is a pain, they aren't embedded and its not quite the same)

CGI is fine for small sites without a lot of traffic. Yes PHP is faster than CGI, but if you need speed mod_perl is better anyway. Also a previous poster mentioned that mod_perl gives you access to the Apache::API. PHP does not do this, in fact doing anything with Apache using PHP is a real pain because it is intentionally separated for 'security' concerns

Which brings me to another thing. You may hear PHP developers talk all the time about how PHP is so much more secure than Perl. Simply not true. You can write insecure programs in PHP just as easily as Perl. In fact PHP I think lures newcomers into a false sense of security because of all the "security" inherent in the system, when in reality there is nothing inherently secure in PHP.

Yes I'm bitter about using PHP at work, I apologize :)

Asking here on PerlMonks, you'll of course find out that everybody suggests you to stick with Perl (including me, I hate PHP). Anyhow, here you are some links to articles comparing Perl and PHP for web development:

We automation: Perl vs PHP, by Serverwatch
PHP and Perl
Developer's dilemma: Perl or PHP?, by Newsfactor

Hope this helps!

Michele.

• mod_perl
• Template Toolkit
• Class::DBI