CptAwesome — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 18:52:33 +0000

There are lots of good tutorials. Even if something doesn't even remotely apply to something you are doing, it'll give you a good idea of syntax, and the process you go through when writing the code. The place I started was Webmonkey

Greg K — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 18:01:56 +0000

Abhishek's reply says about all I would say, and I most certainly agree with the suggestion of writing scripts as the best way to master it. I have been working with PHP for about 4-5 years now, and there are still new things I learn every week (especially now that about 90% of my work is programming PHP).

I guess it really depends on the person, but I love the PHP manual. I sometimes go in there looking for functions I have never used and read about them, and several times have come away with new and/or better ways to do things I did another way before.

As for the size of the download of mySQL, if you are really insterested in learning it, it is well worth the time to download. Learning a language (like anything) requires a commitment of your time to dedicate to it. (and in the case of downloading a file, you can do other things during this time).

With so many systems now coming with a cd burner standard, maybe find a friend with a faster connection and ask them to download it and burn it to CD for you.

Abhishek: thank you for the link on the PEAR standard. I had never seen that before.

Consistant code formatting is essential in debugging! On this forum and one stictly for php i go to, I see people post some of the most messed up code asking for help. The first thing I do is copy it into an editor and clean up the formatting. Makes a BIG difference.

As Abhishek said, comment your code! you may write soemthing today that 3 months from now you find you want to modify, and you can spend twice as much time if you don't know what you were thinking when you wrote it!

I wish you well on your road to programming! It can be fun and addicting!

-Greg

Abhishek Reddy — Sat, 26 Feb 2005 15:51:55 +0000

1 and 2:
preg, ereg and Apache's Rewrite utilise regular expressions (the [0-9] stuff). The difference is preg uses Perl regular expressions, whereas ereg uses POSIX-Extended regular expressions. My guess is Apache Rewrite (mod_rewrite) uses POSIX regex (which may or may not be Extended) or similar.

3:
That particular line doesn't make much sense. You're obviously supposed to replace "//some string here" with some relevant string -- hard to say what exactly that should be without knowing the context of the example. The $foo->bar syntax is used to access methods and variables (members) within an initialised class/object. In my example, class Foo, member bar; in yours, class Sample1, member "some string".

4 and 5:
Write scripts, refer to the manual constantly, and read its user comments. Google for tutorials -- there are too many to link. But I'll mention Kevin Yank's series on PHP and MySQL as they are a nice intro to working with both.

6:
Well there is SQLite, but I doubt that's what you're looking for. I'm afraid most net-based software distributors use at least 56k or higher as their lowest client bandwidth consideration, so 29mb is acceptable. As general advice, it might be an idea to get a better connection if you're planning on working the web.

There are standalone apps offered by MySQL for administration:
Administrator - download
Query Browser - download

Another one 1:
You want to know how to make your code readable, or your script's output readable? Develop and use a reasonable code style (be consistent!) if you want to keep code readable, perhaps stick to the PEAR standard. And properly comment your code -- this is very important. If you want your output to be more readable, that's a matter of styling it with XHTML and CSS.

Another one 2:
Sorry, this makes no sense. What's precisely is your question regarding those functions?