It's Perl, not PERL and the bane of PHP is that it has a multitude of functions, which seem to do almost the same thing but not quite. By the last count there were almost 700 functions!

As an example there is:

• mysql_connect which is defined as mysql_connect ( [string $ server [, string $ username [, string $ password [, bool $ new_link [, int $ client_flags ]]]]] ); and
• mssql_connect which is defined as mssql_connect ( [string $servername [, string $username [, string $password [, bool $new_link]]]] )

and yes, you have odbc_connect and odbc_pconnect if you need persistent connections and the whole lot of mysqli_* improved functions ("i" for improved) and for the Postgres users there is of course pg_connect which unfortunately has a totally different syntax.

Perl has chosen not to go that way, but to provide a basic core of functions and core-modules extending the basic-functions and a multitude of modules which you can add when necessary. This keeps Perl as a language relatively small and clean, but allows for easy extension if and when necessary.

If you want to start coding in Perl, don't try to code PHP in Perl.