gunzip has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
I'm trying to compile a CPAN bundle which will provide a Perl equivalent of the standard PHP function library for use in converting PHP scripts to Perl and for presenting Perl as a ready-to-go alternative to PHP. The aim is to have everything at one's fingertips to counter the fud about PHP being easier to use due to its packaging.
I would assume much of PHP's feature set is available somewhere on CPAN but that's the problem. Unless you know CPAN very well it's difficult to find exactly what you're looking for. Hence the project. What isn't available on CPAN will need to be written from scratch.
As my knowledge of CPAN isn't that deep I'm looking for assistance from Perl monks. I think it will be a valuable tool for re-asserting Perl's relevance for smaller web projects where PHP has become the de facto choice in recent years. I'm also looking to use this in college evening classes where there isn't the option of going online to CPAN every time you need something. Such a bundle would also enable web developers to quickly install a feature-complete development environment on a laptop for offline use.
Main PHP function groups
Apache-specific | Array | Bzip2 | Calendar | Class/object | CURL | Character-Type | Date & Time | DOM XML | Error Handling & Logging | Filesystem | FTP | Function Handling | Gettext | HTTP | iconv | Image | IMAP,POP3,NNTP | Mail | Mathematical | Mcrypt | Mhash | Mimetype | Miscellaneous | Multibyte String | MySQL (< 4.1) | Improved MySQL (>= 4.1) | Network | OpenSSL | Output Control | Object Overloading | PDF | PostgreSQL | Pspell | Session Handling | SimpleXML | Standard PHP Library (PHP5) | SOAP | Stream | String | TCP Wrappers | Tidy | URL | Variable | XML Parser | XML-RPC | XSL | XSLT | Zlib