If you fear that PHP might in any area be better than Perl, then let this document convince you that that is not true.

Superficially, it may seem that its security on the web server, where all users are mutually untrusting and untrustable, makes it the best tool available. And from a sysadmin's point of view, that is true. But for programmers (real ones), PHP makes life hard.

See also what scrottie said.