My first thought on PHP is: not here! , go here or here.

As for a PHP vs Perl discussion: what for? Regardless of which is better or worse (which are arbitrary values), the question should be 'what do I need to do?'. My philostophy is this: The right tools for the job. Without, knowing this how can we make an informed decision?

Perl can do pretty much everything, due to it's generic can do-ness, it loses out to languages tailor made for a job. PHP is great for CGI but that is it's remit, the database manipulation and such are adequate.

If you want one interface for the entire world of computing, Perl is a great choice, and after a little epithany or two, Perl is easy to understand and traditional C formats look a little elementary and perhaps misguided.

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Brother Frankus.