Eirik Hoem has pointed out an online tool a coworker shared with him to work with regular expressions for multiple languages.

A coworker of mine has been working on a ajax enabled regex tool which lets you evaluate regex expressions in several languages (including PHP PCRE and PHP POSIX) with instant results.

The tool lets you put in the string you want to match again and the pattern you want to match with. The results are automatically populated below it, making it easy to fine-tune your expression to only what you want.

Arnold Daniels points out a quick method for creating what he calls "perl-like temporary variables" in the global scope of a script:

When writing code in the global scope, I often have a problem where I'm overwriting a variable. This happens even more often when I work on code of somebody else. Usually has the variable which does the overwriting is usually just a temporary variable.

His code is a simple few lines that shows how it could be used when trying to write information out to a file handle. Some of the comments on the post criticize his use of the global scope but Arnold comes back with his reasoning - mostly that there is already code in the global scope and that adding something else is only adding to it, not making things worse.

Jeff Moore has posted and shared an interesting graph showing something I'd never thought about comparing one language versus another on - the number of keywords it uses.

Well, I like programming language comparisons, so how could I resist this chart (via) promoting the simplicity of the io language by pointing out how few keywords it has. The interesting thing about this is that Java and PHP are tied on this measure of simplicity with 53 keywords.

Though not too meaningful, it is interesting to see how the different languages stack up in the number of reserved words you can't use for anything else. So, does that mean that Perl is the list limiting?

As mentioned by Elizabeth Naramore on the php|architect website today, the XAMPP project has released a new version of their software to automagically install Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl.

From ApacheFriends.org:

In all versions we updated Apache to 2.2.6, PHP to 5.2.4 and phpMyAdmin to 2.11.1. (Find more details on the specific download page.) I'm sorry to say, but under Windows we currently have problems with the new Apache and mod_perl, which doesn't work at all. We hope to find a solution soon.

Links to download the version for your OS of choice (Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris) can be found on this page of the project's website.

Richard Thomas, creator of the jQPie helper application (PHP for jQuery) is suggesting a broader scope for the project in his new blog post:

Now I have slightly larger goals, the Pie represents the slices of code I hope to pack within. Currently there is a php5 slice, and another person has shown some interest in working on a php4 version.

Now I am looking for you! Yea you there the one looking at jQPie thinking it would be cool to use but your knee deep in Python, or Perl, or any other language.

His ultimate goal is to have a single javascript library that can span as many languages as it can right out of the box. To help the effort along, he's offering 2 cash prizes to developers - one for the Python/Ruby-ers out there and the other for Perl-heads. The best, most complete (working) library wins. Keep an eye on his blog for more details on the contest and when it starts.

Sean Coates has created a simple version of a popular bit of Perl functionality and shares the code in hi slatest post - the "pie" ability to perform a search and replace, line by line, through a file using a regular expression.

I've often found myself looking for a PHP equivalent. Not to do simple substitutions, of course, but complex ones. And since I'm most comfortable with PHP, and a I have a huge library of snippets that I can dig out to quell a problem that I may have solved years ago, I've been meaning to fill this void for a while.

So, one evening, he came home and hashed out this version of the script. He includes the code in the post...it works on the command line and pulls in a file (though STDIN) and loops through the buffered version to perform the regex replace.

On the PHP 10.0 Blog, there's a new post today talking about variable tainting and what it might be like if PHP included it too.

Perl and Ruby have variable tainting. Maybe PHP should have it too?

Variable tainting is a bit of built-in functionality that provides a "safety net" of sorts to the contents of variables to help protect both the users and the script itself from potentially harmful content.

He talks about how Ruby and Perl handle the functionality and how, were PHP to work it in, which approach would fit better with PHP's current model:

If one wants to implement proper tainting or sandboxing, it probably should be based on more generic approach that would account for existence of functions unknown in design time.

On his site, blogZero, Douglas Clifton shares his method for authenticating a Googlebot in both Perl and PHP. Basicslly, making sure that the bot hitting your server with the user agent containing Google is, in actuality, really from the search engine.

Following a tip from How to verify Googlebot. In a nutshell, it explains how to use the Unix shell program host to authenticate that an IP address copied from your Web server log file really is a Googlebot and not some email harvester (or whatever).

I decided to take this a step further and demonstrate how you can automate this procedure using a scripting language.

He looks at methods using both programming languages and decides on showing off the PHP version first. It uses a simple method, made even easier by two of PHP's internal functions, gethostbyname and gethostbyaddr. The Perl version relies less of the "higher level" that PHP's functions use and opts for making an actual Socket object to handle the incoming request.

On Hiveminds Magazine's site today, there's a new article that asks the question "what makes a web language successful?"

PHP, Classic ASP and ASP.NET, and soon Ruby owe their success to shared web hosting. I honestly believe that shared hosting is more important than being "enterprise ready" when it comes to web development.

Shared hosting is the reason that the internet became an economic force. So why is it that certain parts of the IT world ignore shared hosting and it's needs?

They explain what they mean by noting that Java isn't what shared hosts need, Python isn't quite there yet, and Perl is still a bit more difficult to use in a web environment. They even look at what it would take for these languages to become more "PHP-like" and really get to that next stage of web development popularity.

Sometimes, all someone needs is a path to follow when they're looking to help out a project. That's why Ligaya Turmelle has posted this great list of ways that you can help out PHP and its surrounding projects (like PEAR).

Main items on the list are:

• General ways to help
• Helping the QA team
• Helping with PEAR
• Helping with the Documentation
• Helping via Perl (extensions)
• Heliping with the PHP Core

Under each of these main points there are several sub-points for even more ideas of places to get involved. It's a great list, and you can get even more information on helping in an area by clicking on its title to be taken to the official page.