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Example of how Perl can be used to process an array of data.

I have no experience with Perl and suspect it may be the best choice of technology for a financial analysis and reporting website I am making. I expect to allow users to upload PDF's or CSV files to my website, which my site will then parse, summarize and generate new reports.

There will be times when my logic needs to access published national standards tables for a specific record with names like:

CPS Retail 2 Max (Developing Markets only)
CPS Retail Key Entered

from a list of thousands of items

So, this is the reason I suspect Perl is a good choice.

Can someone please confirm that and show me why Perl is so good for pattern matching?

Is it a front end or a back end technology? What other technologies often work well with Perl? It is compiled? Or is it a script?

Thanks.

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David Favor

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curiouswebster

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That is so cool.

I worked with both awk + sed ages ago to do things fast on SCO UNIX.

Thanks!

David Favor

Hum... I realize likely best to expand on what backend might mean.

If you're referring to writing server side scripts (non-front facing, non-Web), then PERL is your tool.

If you're trying to use something like mod_perl2 + hand roll your own CMS, I'd suggest you stick with WordPress, as trying to roll your own PERL front facing CMS will require a fair bit of knowledge about session management.

Also hand rolling a CMS, will require you running a dedicated server + doing your own admin, including installing + maybe building mod_perl from source.

With Ubuntu, you can install mod_perl via...

apt-get install libapache2-mod-perl2

Open in new window

And you'll still have a very long road ahead of you getting mod_perl to work as you expect.
_______

I run a high speed, high traffic, WordPress private hosting service.

Almost every day I write PERL code so solve server side issues of one form or another.

I also write many PERL scripts called from WordPress plugins + front end code to handing data crunching.

For front end user interfacing, I stick WordPress, so I can avoid the entire session management issue.

Also with WordPress, I can setup + deliver a site to a client in a few minutes, which delivers 1,000,000+ requests/minute.

Sigh... If I had to do this in PERL, I'd have to duplicate 1000s of lines of WordPress code. I'd rather just use WordPress of front ends.