Path: news.cs.au.dk!not-for-mail
From: Sascha Kimmel <tricos@bravenewweb.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: I feel a bit discriminated
Date: 19 Jun 2000 13:55:33 -0000
Organization: University of Aarhus, Department of Computer Science (DAIMI)
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Atle <trollet@skynet.be> said: 

> Sascha Kimmel wrote:
> > 
> 
> > I will do, because you can use Perl without compiling, which is especially
> > useful for webserver programming.
> Couldn't you build something on top of gbeta?
> Unfortunately, I know very little about web-programming, I have a PHP3 book 
that I will have to read one of these days ... but it
> can't be much different from how you deal with these things in Java?

Oh oh oh, don't mix up PHP and Java!
Java is a language whose code needs to be compiled, PHP is a script language 
as Perl.
In JAVA you need to import and import and import and import until you have 
all classes together, in PHP all base functions are automatically available 
and if you need external files, no problem:
include "myfile.php";
require "myfile.php";


> A sort of Beta applet?

.. or servlet!


> Of course, since I know so little of web-scripting, I may be confusing the 
server side with the client side.

Server vs. Client!


> But I am positive that the Beta language in itself would be ideally suited 
for webserver programming, since it is for all kinds of
> other servers, and a webserver is just a specialization of 
> 
> webserver : server(# (*whatever a server is*) #)


No, BETA is NOT suited for webserver programming, if you compare BETA to PHP 
e.g.
Perl REGEX are not available until now and the MOST things you're doing when 
programming the CGI is handling from data, normally text, which has to be 
parsed, filtered, cleaned, compared, saved, loaded and so on :)

Have a look, here is some code from the PERL script I'm just working on:

--------------X<--------------------------------------------------
<form name="changeform" action="index.cgi" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="store">
<input type="hidden" name="price1" value="$price1">
<input type="hidden" name="price2" value="$price2">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">
<tr>
	<td valign="top" align="left" bgcolor="#eeeeee"><font 
face="Arial,Helvetica,Geneva" size="2" color="#000000">
	<b>Woche vom</b>
	</td>
	<td valign="top" align="left" bgcolor="#eeeeee"><font 
face="Arial,Helvetica,Geneva" size="2" color="#000000">
EOF

# Startdate
print "<select name=\"startdate1\">\n";
for ($i=1; $i<=31; $i++) { if ($i==$mday) { $sd1selected=" selected" } else { 
$sd1selected="" }; print "	<option$sd1selected>$i\n" }
print "</select>\n	<select name=\"startdate2\">";
for ($i=1; $i<=12; $i++) { if ($i==$mon) { $sd1selected=" selected" } else { 
$sd1selected="" }; print "	<option$sd1selected>$i\n" }
print "</select>\n	<select name=\"startdate3\">";
for ($i=0; $i<=10; $i++) { $y=$year+$i; if ($y==$year) { $sd1selected=" 
selected" } else { $sd1selected="" }; print "	<option$sd1selected>$y\n" }
print "</select>\n";
--------------X<--------------------------------------------------


In BETA it is IMPOSSIBLE to concatenate strings as in the most scripting 
languages, which is mostly because BETA does not have a special character for 
variables like "$", which Perl and PHP use, so something like the following 
is impossible with BETA:

$thisstring="this";
$string="Have a look at $thisstring, and afterwards have a look at 
$thisstring!";

In BETA you would need to do this the follwing way:

'this'->thisstring[];
'Have a look at '->string[];
thisstring[]->string.append;
', and afterwards have a look at '->string.append;
thisstring[]->string.append;
'!'->string.append;

These are six lines in comparison to three lines in Perl!

You can also use BETA REGEX (which is POSIX syntax) but because nobody :) 
wants to use POSIX syntax and all :) people want to use PERL syntax this is 
not used often I guess.


> But I don't know Perl either :-)

Oh, that's defintely a problem :)

Regards,
Sascha Kimmel