OK, I know you're gonna laugh but...

[Dyne]

WHAT ON EARTH IS MYSQL, PERL, AND PHP??
No one's ever told me so I don't know. Thank you for your time.

Oh wait, I accidently put this in the free webspace thing. Sorry Peo.

[Daniel]

Perl is a web language that is mostly accociated with cgi scripts. Sorry if I didn't explain it good.

PHP is I think professional home pages, I am not sure but anyways. PHP is another web lauguage that can use mySQL or postgreSQL. Sorry if I didn't explain it good.


mySQL is a database. Mainly used with php. vBulletin uses mySQL to keep all the messages and posts. Again sorry if I didn't explain good.

I'm new to it al too.

[rapmaster]

I can explain Perl...

Perl is a progaming language that is very simular to C++. It is very powerful and can do many taskes. Perl is more commonly seen in webpages as .cgi scripts. CGI or Common Gateway Interface is a way to gather info from users and other variables and use them to manipulate html and other things, CGI can be used to do a number of things such as a Message board, form mail, password scripts, search scripts, data baseing and many other features that are too numerous to mention. If your interested in CGI I know sites that have CGI scripts and I know a couple of tutorials, there are only a few strait to the point books on it, one Perl for Dummies, and Discover Perl 5. Any questions, feel free to ask.

[Bruce]

Sorry if I didn't explain it good.
Sorry if I didn't explain it good.
Sorry if I didn't explain it good.
There's no need for you to be sorry about everything.

[rapmaster]

ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO ROTFLMAO

thats funny in a odd sort of way

[Dusty]

PHP is I think professional home pagesNope, PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. It's my all-time favorite acronym, right up their with Dilbert's TTP (The TTP Project).

It didn't always stand for that. It used to mean Personal Home Page, back then it was a collection of Perl scripts for use on personal homepages.

[webspaceseeker]

PHP is actually very similar to perl (simplified), but mySQL ist a database server. Its is very useful if you have a lot of changing data. Its structured in databases and tables. Every table contains data you can use by php or perl or c++ etc. MySQL is often used because its free. There are other SQLs, like postgre or Microsoft SQL Server. Any questions?

[jm4n]

Nope, PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. It's my all-time favorite acronym, right up their with Dilbert's TTP (The TTP Project).
There's also GNU's Not Unix. I love self-referential acronyms :)

And since noone has mentioned it, Perl stands for Practical Extraction and Report Language. It's commonly used for CGI, but has many other uses as a general programming/scripting language. It's one of the fastest scripting languages in existence.

PHP is similar, but is simplified, and was designed specifically to be an HTML-embeded language, unlike Perl. Its syntax makes more sense to mere mortals, as it has logic behind it, but true geeks like Perl. Programming in PHP is a simple science of structured keywords, variables, and functions; programming in Perl is an art, with complex constructs, and probably 1000 ways to accomplish any one task. But you didn't ask all of that...

MySQL is a relational database system, and as mentioned above it's free. It also integrates seemlessly with PHP, so one can create very dynamic web sites very quickly. Another great free option is PostgreSQL, which is more robust in many ways -- but not nearly as easy to use/learn. It is SQL based, and also integrates with PHP.

Since noone has really explained these tools' purpose, here's an over-simplified attempt:

When you create HTML pages, the visitor sees exactly what you created. Each visitor will see the exact same thing as any other user viewing the same page, since it's just a file with static information in it.

Whenever you're at a site which accepts form input, or shows items from a shopping cart or search engine results, for example, this is considered Dynamic content -- which simply means that what the visitor sees can vary.

This is always done with some kind of program. Some programs are compiled (like the programs you use on your PC), and others are scripts -- which is simply code that is executed without being compiled. Scripts are easy to modify, as you can change your code and just run it right away. This is why scripts are so common on the web.

Perl is a general purpose scripting language, but fits very well as a CGI tool. PHP was built from the ground up to be a web scripting language, and for that reason it is often the better choice. When used with the Apache web server, it's very fast and efficient.

If you need more information than that, try a Google Search (http://www.google.com), or check out the tutorials over at DevShed (http://www.devshed.com) or Web Monkey (http://www.webmonkey.com), which are both great starting points.

[MarlboroCowboy]

jm4n

Definality gonna agree with ya there cause what ya said is correct on php, perl and mysql! I would have said same thing tho you had beat me to it! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[LastActionHero]

BTW is GNU an acronym or what? What does it stand for?

[ozefrog]

i think it is, im not no Linux guru but there is a desktop called Gnome and i think its Gnome Networking U*....err dunno?

[meow]

What jm4n said is true guys. Better belive it. That's what GNU stands for.:D

[jm4n]

Yes, I wasn't joking, that's exactly what GNU stands for: GNU's Not Unix. See http://www.GNU.org if you don't believe me -- it's all over the page :)