[thelist] in-principle, PHP/mySQL shopping basket question

[Aredridel]

> > Gack. Servlet engines (Java/JSP) allow you to run your own methods
> > when the session is ended (manually or by timeout) -- doesn't PHP
> > have anything like that?

I think it can -- it's just hard to make work right.

> 
> But Java isn't an interpreted language is it? What I mean by that is,
> isn't it a bit more powerful than a regular scripting language such as
> PHP or ASP? Can't it just sit around in the background and wait for
> something to happen?

It runs from bytecode -- just like PERL, just like PHP, just like Ruby.

The difference is, it skips compiling the bytecode and makes you do that
manually.  PHP can do the same if you use the code-caching modules from
Zend.