Jonnno

I fancied learning some perl but since most hosts only offer php I learned that instead but I'm still interested in perl. How hard is it to set up on my PC. I was able to get a nice LAMP installer, are there similar things for perl?

Cerulean

Perl is less common server side - PHP/MySQL is the defacto combo it seems. Hosts take this fact and use it to squeeze money out of you, evil people. That's why nice hosts give you PHP/MySQL/Perl/Python/mod_python at no extra charge.
It's fairly easy to set up on your PC. Just download a simple webserver like abyssws from aprelium.com and Perl from wherever. It's very easy to set up after that, read the abyss docs.

Berto

its all free so they can cut the costs down.

Cerulean

Perl is free too...

Mad_guy

Actually despite what many people think, PERL is an extremely popular SS language, last time I checked, Perl coded websites actually outnumbered PHP websites by quite a bit. But that has been a while ago.

I personally just use PHP for side server, and Perl for IO and such. Because that's practically what Perl was built for. But many people prefer Perl for the server. If you don't believe me, check out IkonBoard.



Besides, if your host is reasonable you can just install Perl yourself.

mackenga

My host offers Perl, and it was the reason they got my business, instead of a PHP-only host that was 20% cheaper.

I think one of the reasons why hosts prefer PHP over Perl is that Perl is perceived to be more prone to security issues, though personally I think this is unfair. You can be just as insecure in PHP.