Programmers I have a question
 

If I need to have a cron script that can build thousands pages, is it better to use perl or php, or it doesn't matter?

What problems would I be expecting when it comes to server resources when running such a cron script?

Thanks in advance.

You could use perl, php, c, python etc., it really doesn't matter. As far as resources it depends on how the script is coded and what kind of memory consumption the arrays, variables, etc are going to use. Just need to be diligent and test other than that it doesn't really matter.

I think perl is best for that kind of thing

try perl or php

build thousands pages per day ? per month ? per hour ?

Perl is good, but i would use java.

Rather than a flurry of activity at xx:00 then nothing for the next 57 minutes why not write the script so that it paces the updates over the whole hour (or however long)? That way resources will be much less of a concern. (Unless the script hogs a shitload of memory)

Perl is generally better for parsing and manipulating text. Actually by a long shot, but php deployments are more common. I would say depends. I actually use Ruby for any text automation stuff. It takes the best of a lot of languages and is very useful.