Re^2: Perl mindshare in web development

The single best thing that could be done to popularize Perl to the masses would be to make Perl code embeddable in pages...This sort of format is really the only thing that makes PHP popular. If Perl could do that, I'd never touch PHP

I can't understand why embedding code in webpages is so widely considered a special ability of PHP which Perl lacks when that is such a basic built-in feature of mod_perl.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned Perl Server-Side Includes which Apache 1.3 provides out of the box with mod_include?

<!--#perl sub="print q~one line of perl code~" -->
[download]

It's so easy, so powerful, so... obvious!

<!--#perl sub="sub{
  $_ = 'Multiple lines of Perl code.';
  s/\.$/.../;
  print
}"-->
[download]

Apache 2.0 moves this capability to the Apache::IncludeHook module.

If Perl could do that

Famous last words. What made you think it could not?

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Re^3: Perl mindshare in web development by adrianh (Chancellor) on Jun 04, 2006 at 09:55 UTC
I can't understand why embedding code in webpages is so widely considered a special ability of PHP which Perl lacks when that is such a basic built-in feature of mod_perl. Because "mod_perl compiled with the SSI option" ne "perl". Because the "out the box" experience with PHP for the web for most people is a Apache already enabled with mod_php. For Perl it's the good old fashioned cgi-bin directory. Yes, Perl can do all that PHP can do. Yes, in many cases it can do it better from a certain technical perspective. But for most people getting up and running with PHP is way easier than getting up and running with mod_perl.	[reply]
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