Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : Learning PHP or Perl

[node9]

Hi everyone. I hope this is the right place to post this. I really have been meaning to learn PHP or PERL. People say PHP is easier to learn, I really need to learn it, so i can better myself. The problem is, I don't know any PHP at all. I am starting at point 0,0.



I need something, like, a guide, online that'll take me step by step, showing me the most basic things, then showing me examples. then moving on. Something lik ethat, i hate learning new languages.

Can anyone recommend any URL's? any online guides, tutorials, something.

someone please help

-node

[node9]

I just find that programming is very hard for me to learn. However I am good at sys admin stuff, it's weird.

I look at like, a piece of code, or something, like this
#!/bin/bash
x=1
for i in *;d
mv "$i" "viper-$x.jpg"
x=$(expr $x + 1)
done

i look at that and wonder what does expr mean
and why do you write expr. WHY not something else, why do you put it there
why not somewhere else
stuff like that man

When do you konw when to put it, stuff like that is why i dont understand programming. I wouild need somethign to tell me step by step.

I mean, i know that was not php or perl, but that was just an example, and yes, i do know what it does. Just boggles me at how things work, why that way, and how do you know when to do certain things.

someone help =\

[JTY]

Programming can be a pain, I use to know Perl quite well.


As for tutorials on php, go to http://www.php.net/ they have some links.

Somewhere around my house I've got a Perl CGI tutorial.

[ffeingol]

I liked "PHP Essentials" by Julie C. Meloni. I new programing already, so it was a good reference. We also have some reference links on Webmasters Resources.

Frank

[The Prohacker]

PHP is my latest lang. to learn, so far been 5 months, doing fairly well, already have a background in perl/c, and a few others. I just grabbed several scripts off of hotscripts.com and looked at them and figured it out,
http://www.php.net/manual/en/

May help ya some....

[JustinK]

Once you learn one you'll be able to kind of melt into the other one (with a few adjustments). For anyone starting perl (and I do mean starting), I recommend "PERL AND CGI FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB" a Visual Quickstart Guide by Elizabeth Castro.

Keyword here: VISUAL. It goes through snippets and tells you what each part does. It is for a beginner though and actually tells you each thing to type (line by line).

I'm getting started into php myself. I've got a php4 book from wrox, a core php programming book, and there's bound to be another one laying around here somewhere. Then for perl I have the book mentioned above, Perl Cookbook (Oreilly), and "Professional Perl Programming" by Wrox. Yes... I went to one of those discount online bookstores and got a little carried away, but I have some good reference material now.

[ffeingol]

Another easy thing to do is to go to a place like http://www.hotscripts.com and just download a few scripts. I think it's pretty easy to learn PHP/Perl by just looking at other peoples code.

[alpha]

if you are a HS student... look for a computer science class and take it

in most cases, they'll teach you c++ which has exactly the same syntax as php (some differences but not alot) but differences in function names...

now, perl... i dunno how you get started in perl... i've been using c++ for couple years now with a 4 year background in visual basic... the transfer from vb to c++ was pretty easy (probably cause i was young and wanted to learn everything)... and from c++ to php was super great but when i looked toward perl, it was a challenge.. i still have difficult programming in perl and i try to avoid it as much as i can

my recommendation: if you have no previous programming background... then get yourself either in a class or a book. you just need to understand syntax and semantics and you should be good to go

g'luck

[MCHost-Marc]

I know both Perl & PHP and i have to say that PHP was easier to learn. There are lots of books that can teach you. I have all my books at the office, but i will send you the titles of them tomorrow

[jtan15]

Originally posted by JustinK
For anyone starting perl (and I do mean starting), I recommend "PERL AND CGI FOR THE WORLD WIDE WEB" a Visual Quickstart Guide by Elizabeth Castro.

Yes, that is a pretty good book. It teachers perl as you would use it for web pages ... form submittion, getting information about browsers, etc.

I think one of the best books you can find for Perl is "Programming Perl" by Larry Wall (the creator of Perl), Christiansen & Schwartz. It is published by O'Reilly, and has a Camel on the front cover.

Once you've got some of the perl basics down, another good book is "Perl Cookbook", again published by O'Reilly. This one is by Christiansen and Torkington.

Good luck!

[node9]

thank you everyone for your replies and useful information

I will check out the book titles and links you have given me

thanks again

-node

[(SH)Saeed]

I have been coding Perl/CGI for about 6 years now, and some other languages before that. The last few months I have been using PHP4. I would recommend you to learn PHP4, since it is written for the web. It has a lot of functions that make things easier for the web and database applications. You also have a very good and complete online manual at www.php.net
Since you're just starting, I would suggest you getting a newbies book that explains to you how things like "if", "while", "for", etc works. Once you get the basic knowledge, you can start learning any language you want.

However, if you rather like to learn Perl/CGI, then I recommend the book "Learning Perl" by O'reilly. It is a great book that explains Perl from the beginning. This book is highly recommended (not just by me) to anyone interested in learning Perl.

Good luck.

[Lonny]

Good luck with that, I never knew how to program, and I hate everything related to programming and computers in general but hey you gotta make a living somehw right?


try searching for tutorials on my site:

http://www.findtutorials.com

don't worry it's not SPAM we're getting 300,000 uniques per month and not looking for a few extra users making posts on the forums for that


anyways, go to the PHP and perl category in the web
development section


Good luck