PHP vs. Perl?
The biggest advantage of PHP over Perl is that PHP was designed for scripting for the web, while Perl was designed to do a lot more. Because of this, Perl can get very complicated. The flexibility / complexity of Perl can make it difficult for developers of varying skill levels to collaborate. PHP has a less-confusing and stricter format without losing flexibility. PHP is also easier to integrate into existing HTML than Perl. In large part, PHP has all the ‘good’ functionality of Perl – constructs, syntax, et cetera – without making it as complicated as Perl can be. Yet PHP’s command-line interpreter (CLI) is powerful enough to perform high-level tasks much in the same way Perl has been traditionally employed. Perl is a very tried and true language, and has stood its ground since the 1980’s, but PHP has matured and evolved quickly, and continues to make fantastic progress.