<[Alan]> How about this for haphazard thievery from better languages: "It combines (in the author's opinion, anyway) some of the best features of C, sed, awk, and sh, so people familiar with those languages should have little difficulty with it." At least credit where it's due? ;) <[Brennen]> Indeed. Where Perl is so manifestly the language of a cheerful intellectual kleptomaniac, PHP can't help giving the impression that Lerdorf rummaged through Larry Wall's trash for a couple of months and came out with a handful of dollar signs and some double quotes.