Chris Shiflett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Not to discourage any PHP bashing (I'll often join in), but a few things >on your list aren't really that accurate: > >--- James G Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> o No support for testing >> o No support for documentation >> o No way to declare variables / manage typos > >PHP has these particular things, although I agree with the rest of your >list.
They weren't present in PHP 4 two years ago when I developed the application and then started on the current project. I haven't seen the equivalent of POD or Test::Harness in PHP. It might be part of PEAR, which was coming out about then and has had time to mature a bit since then. Right now, in Perl, I can embed my documentation and tests right next to the code being documented and tested. The tests themselves become part of the documentation. This also means I can write the documentation and tests and then hand the file off to someone else for implementation; they will have all the examples and explanations they need (or the tests aren't complete) when they write the code. (I will admit that even this is stetching the Perl support a bit and required that I write some code myself which I have yet to release on CPAN [trying to think of a suitable name atm]). I haven't seen the equivalent of `use strict' either. This would have been a great help two or three years ago. It is easy for me to be wrong about PHP because I have a lot more experience with Perl than with PHP. I probably won't retrofit my older app with much, but I'll look around and see what I can find. Looking through the PHP site: PHPUnit is available, first release was April, 2002. First production release was mid-March, 2004. Didn't find anything for `embedded documentation' Didn't find anything that indicated I could choose to require variable declarations before referencing them. The last one is something I would probably use immediately to clean up some lingering issues with the current production application. Please feel free to point me at URLs or drop hints on what I should look for. If nothing else, I can pass it along to others in my department that are still doing active PHP development. -- James Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 979-862-3725 Texas A&M CIS Operating Systems Group, Unix -- Report problems: http://perl.apache.org/bugs/ Mail list info: http://perl.apache.org/maillist/modperl.html List etiquette: http://perl.apache.org/maillist/email-etiquette.html
