Mignon --
The short answer is that the two are fairly equivalent and if you're
asking the question then you're not going to run up against the nitty
gritty differences for a while.
In general, I bet you get more "PHP is better" answers on this list ;-)
Both can talk directly to databases, both are quick, and both are easy to
use (and once you know one picking up the other is pretty easy because
they are quite similar). Both are popular and many things are written
for both because porting is pretty easy.
That said, I would be inclined to point a new user who is only writing
web pages and web scripts toward PHP because
- you can, indeed, easily scatter your php all over your web site (even
if some might not think that that's terribly pure :-) while doing so
with perl takes a little more manual configuration
- perl is incredibly powerful (not to say that php isn't, but...) and
picking up php may be likened to learning to fly in a Cessna instead
of a multi-engined jet
even though I am a fan and user of both and often use perl because an
existing script will translate so easily to a web page. For an advanced
programmer I'd say to pick up bother because of the awesome depth of
functionality available through CPAN, a collection of modules and tools
for perl that already do, and generally quite well, anything most people
are likely to want to do :-)
HTH & HAND
:-D
--
David T-G * There is too much animal courage in
(play) davidtg@justpickone.org * society and not sufficient moral courage.
(work) davidtgwork@justpickone.org -- Mary Baker Eddy, "Science and Health"
http://justpickone.org/davidtg/ Shpx gur Pbzzhavpngvbaf Qrprapl Npg!
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