It's not meant to be patronizing! When you know a little Perl and a little PHP, you will find it hard to see the difference. But when you know a lot of Perl and a lot of PHP, you'll definitely find yourself in situations where, if you've chosen the PHP route, you'll be thinking, "This would be so easy in Perl".

So, I guess it all depends what your long term goals are. If you don't see yourself doing more than simple DB powered web pages, you have no reason to learn Perl.

But, even if you'll never use Perl, if you understand what it can do, it will help you in your PHP. It seems that people who love Perl are people who love to learn (I, for example, am trying to get my head around Lisp the same way that a language student would try to understand latin - useless for everyday life, but essential for for changing your outlook paradigm :).

Right tool, right job. Keep that in mind.

.02

cLive ;-)