Design - continued ......

C++

C++, and it’s predecessor C, are compiled languages which when it comes to speed in either a normal application, or a CGI based one, are very difficult to beat. Developed by Bjarne Stroustrup between 1983 and 1985, C++ is an extension to C, which was originally developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs between 1971 and 1972.

However, when it comes to text and string manipulation, C++ lags far behind such languages as Perl, so far that “it’s almost ridiculous to try to do the same thing in C++” as you were doing in Perl.

From a security stand point, there is a major advantage in using a compiled language, such as C++, rather than an interpreted language, such as Perl or PHP, the advantage is that the source code for the CGI script is not stored on the web server. This may seem a minor advantage, but if a backup of the CGI script you are working on is stored on the remote server (let us say ‘index.cgi’) then the web server will not be able to identify the file ‘index.cgi-’ or ‘index.cgi.backup’ as an executable CGI script, and instead will display the raw source code.

Language summary

From the features, it is clear to see that the most suited development language to the project is either Perl or PHP. If security is also taken into account, as it should be, then Perl is the better choice of the two languages.