Posted by DonO on 07/28/06 14:51

If you're working in PHP 4.x PEAR is a separate piece of the puzzle,
and is basically just a bunch of code written in an Object Oriented
fashion. There's also PECL ("pickle") that re-creates much of the PEAR
objects in C, so they're compiled and run faster.

PEAR is built into PHP 5 from what I understand (just starting to work
in it now) so it's not "necessary" but it's available if you want to
use it for things like emailing, database connection (PDO), performance
monitoring, etc.

I didn't come from an OO background when I started with PHP, so I
didn't mess with PEAR or much of the OO model in 4. Since I've heard
good things about 5's implementation, I'm trying to wrap my brain
around it now.

HTH.
D.


crescent_au@yahoo.com wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've been using PHP for a while now but I haven't actually used PEAR. I
> have just read half a chapter in a book, it sounds alright but haven't
> actually used it. I was just wondering, is it really necessary to use
> PEAR? I usually get things done using PHP/MySQL. I don't know if I'm
> really missing out on something by not using PEAR. How highly is it
> recommended? On most job ads, i don't even see them mentioning PEAR.
> They mostly just say PHP/MySQL.. Why is that? Don't people like PEAR
> much?
>
> Thanks
> Ben

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