[Xitami] CGI School

[Marc Doigny]

>
>I am a programmer by trade, but I am still very new to any sort of internet
>programming.  I mainly know old-school (GW BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL) and  a
>half-dozen very proprietary languages.  Currently my Xitami FTP/HTTP server
>is running on Windows ME.
>
>I was wondering if anyone could help me with:
>
>A) What would be a good first scripting method to begin with on Xitami?
>(PHP,  Perl, etc.)

hello

if you're new to scripting, but you can program in basic, you should stay 
to basic !!!! (lots of exclamation points here)
look at ALL the 'help-me' messages about perl & PHP :-) if that is not a 
clue about selecting a language...
i tried perl years ago and it was not a success...
keep your scripting talents if you have some to <script 
language=javascript> in html.
a script is converted at execute time and then executed, an executable is 
already compiled and ready for execution.

you can use visual basic (if you are used to it), but it's like an overkill 
(whenever a visual basic exe is loaded to be executed, other things not 
needed are also loaded).

Xitami will even accept old quickbasic code! (xitami will try to execute 
everyting is executable, even batch files).

i only use powerbasic for 3 (three) days, and i love it!
It has all the needed things to perform string operations (lots of command 
that lack in visual basic and other basic languages like seach-and-replace, 
crop, regular expressions, and so on). And because it's a console program 
(like for instance tracert and ping) it has the power of a 32 application, 
but not the overhead of loading graphics and forms.

Power basic is also network-aware. For instance, you can send mail in let's 
say 5 lines of code (it's not as simple and easy as the 'sendmail' program 
in *nix but it does it job well).

You only need some code to get all the form data into the right variables 
and you print it to the client using PRINT#
I can send you sample code that i use on my site.

Sone nice feature of powerbasic is it's error handling. basically when an 
error occurs, it will continue with the next statement (that's the best 
thing to do, it seems to me) so you don't get an HTTP 500 (internet server 
error)
if needed, you can trap errors visual basic-like.

There are probably other basic flavors floating around that can do the same 
job.

Marc

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