Re: PHP CGI

On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, David Duong wrote: > I mean any time you hear the word CGI it is rarely referring to PHP, always > Perl (My most comfortable Web language). You'd think that CGI only refers > to Perl. Back in the day, CGI repositories had a greater representation of programs written in C and other "hardcore" languages. As web servers became more available, the center of gravity of CGI development moved toward more accessible languages, such as Perl (along with shell scripts, Python, TCL, etc.). > If you goto a site and download scripts under category CGI you would be > downloading Perl scripts, PHP has its own category. One reason for this is that PHP is not necessarily CGI. The typical high-performance PHP installation is running as either a static or dynamic module linked into Apache through that web server's proprietary interface. For all these people, CGI has nothing to do with it. In point of fact, many people also run Perl in similar fashions (such as mod_perl), in which case CGI is also out of the equation. But by the time this became common, Perl web development had already developed a strong connection to the term CGI. > Should CGI still mainly Perl even though PHP is somewhat easier, quicker > thus easier suited for CGI. People should do their development any way they feel comfortable. Once again, though, you're confusing CGI, which is a specific interface, with server-side web application development in general. > I think the meaning of CGI is quite blured. > Anyone else think so? Yes, the term is very often misused and has come to be misconstrued as referring to things that have nothing to do with CGI. miguel