Re: [chiPHPug-discuss] PEAR

[Jason R. <ja...@ho...>]

PEAR fills a couple of roles for people.

For some people it provides access to system libraries that may not be 
compiled in on the particular shared hosting environment that they 
happen to be using.

Other people its application level libraries that they dont want to code 
themselves (I use a DNS pear module for this reason).

Others its compatibility to legacy code (BLOWFISH encryption was once 
only available via PEAR).

etc. etc. etc.

It is nothing more than a library system, kinda like CPAN for Perl 
(although obviously not as mature).

As a rule of thumb, if you dont understand something, either learn it 
well or dont use it.  There is a lot of variation in code quality, 
compatibility and support in PEAR (just like CPAN).  Wherever possible 
use the OS libraries that are compiled into PHP, and if you need 
something, get it compiled in.

Hope that helps ;-)