php for perl programmers

any good tutorials?

[randomuser]

i'm doing a project right now and i think it would be a good time to try and learn php. as of now my only experience is installing php scripts, but i know perl pretty well. i'm choosing php over perl for this project because it relies heavily on mysql and i won't be able to use mod_perl.

i was wondering if anyone knows of some good tutorials that are specifically designed for people who are learning php after learning perl? right now i'm reading the php.net manual, but i'm wondering if there's anything better.

[Knowles]

I dont know any specifcally for going from perl to php, but a search on google for PHP tutorial will bring up alot of results. If you want to get more specific you can put PHP MySQL tutorial and that will bring up more specific for maybe what you are trying to do. From what I understand its a fairly easy transistion (I dont know perl so cant say for sure.)

[lorax]

Hello randomuser,
Some of the better books like PHP and MySQL Web Development by Welling & Thomas will make mention of where PHP is similar to other languages like PERL and C. For the most part, if you've programmed in PERL then you should have little trouble learning PHP. A function is a function is a function. Syntax is the difference and your PERL experience will remind you of what to look for when writing PHP script.

MHO

[gethan]

Again no tutorials but about a year ago I did the same as you. I worked solely from the documentation available on php.net and mysql.com

The biggest and still most frustrating difference for me is regular expressions. Otherwise its simple.

[lorax]

...regular expressions

They can be a bear for sure but well worth learning. My other nemisis has been multi-dimension arrays. For some reason or another they take me forever to get the syntax correct to build and/or use.

[randomuser]

yea, it is very easy to pick up. the main differences i've seen so far are the regular expressions. they seem much more confusing than in perl, but that's probably cause i'm used to it that way. also, perl (well version 5 at least) hasn't been changing all that much in the past few years while php has. reading over the manual there are several places where it talks about stuff only implemented in 4.2.0 or whatever the current version is. i'm working with 4.0.1pl2 or something like that, i'll have to see if my client can upgrade.

[dhdweb]

So, if I know PHP, would it be easy to learn PERL?

[jatar_k]

There are

Regular Expression Functions (Perl-Compatible) [php.net]

PHP is pretty easy to learn if you have another language under your belt. As with learning any new language the syntax is different but the basic logic is the same. I have only ever used php.net and worked with scripts I have found to see what they do.