fixed

Depends how broad the definition of "harvestable". I'd be amazed if some spammers aren't reaping prime e-mail addresses by parsing out the at dot stuff.

well, he wrote "or other web apps languages." i think php answers that definition. contact him and ask.

Perl and Python, the other 'P' languages, make for excellent web app languages as well. My employment uses Python to design online web applications, so I can think of at least a couple of reasons to choose something other than PHP. :)

A lot of people hate PHP, I'm not one of them, but I can completely understand why someone might want to use Perl instead.

Also, I don't know how much more difficult it would be to create an entire new language that is incredibly similar to Perl than learn how to write actual Perl. I guess people can be happy that someone felt the need and had the time though.

Coldfusion is a solid language as is the Java/JSP combination. I was kind of anti-Java because it takes a while to get the environment set up to go, but I've found it better than PHP. Not that I don't like PHP, I do.

"PHP was invented because of the difficulties of using PERL as a web app language."

First of all, Perl is the language, perl is the interpreter and PERL is only used by people who know nothing about Perl.

Second, PHP was originally written in "Circa 1995 Perl" as a CGI script. It was called PHP-Tools.

Third, Perl is extremely easy to use for web apps. What's so difficult about this?

#!/usr/bin/perl # CGI script that creates a fill-out form # and echoes back its values. # straight out of the documentation for the CGI module.

use CGI qw/:standard/; print header, start_html('A Simple Example'), h1('A Simple Example'), start_form, "What's your name? ",textfield('name'),p, "What's the combination?", p, checkbox_group(-name=>'words', -values=>['eenie','meenie','minie','moe'], -defaults=>['eenie','minie']), p, "What's your favorite color? ", popup_menu(-name=>'color', -values=>['red','green','blue','chartreuse']),p, submit, end_form, hr;

if (param()) { print "Your name is",em(param('name')),p, "The keywords are: ",em(join(", ",param('words'))),p, "Your favorite color is ",em(param('color')), hr; }