You missed the whole point of what I was saying with the GT::WWW example. It had nothing to do with fetching a web page.

In Perl, I can get a single variable that can do this:

print "Var is: $var\n";
print "Var is: " . int($var) . "\n";
print "Var's method is: " . $var->method();

The output could be something along the lines of:

Var is: String
Var is: 27
Var's method is: Something else

PHP cannot do that, thus making things more complicated - as your example showed.

Also, with regards to $obj->method(); vs. $obj->method; - are you trying to tell me that leaving off the () make it uglier? Let's not change the subject: $obj->method; is less ugly than $obj->method(); So, therefore, here is at least one area where PHP is uglier than Perl.



Another thing, as you point out, is that PHP is much easier. So, people can churn out something that "works" with much less effort than they can with Perl - but they don't know how to code, so the code ends up being terribly ugly. Yes, there is ugly Perl out there, and yes, there is ugly PHP out there too. But when it is properly written, either language can be as ugly or pretty as you want to make it - ultimately it comes down to how much effort the user is putting into their code. PHP encourages less effort, which, I think, directly leads to ugliness.

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Jason Rhinelander
Gossamer Threads
jason@gossamer-threads.com