PHP vs. Perl: Performance Comparison and Key Features

Perl and PHP are two well-established server-side scripting languages used for web development. However, while they do share a few similarities, they also have significant differences in performance, syntax, use cases, and other key aspects.

In this blog, we take a look at PHP vs. Perl to help you decide which scripting language is the best choice for your web application. We provide a brief overview of each, offer an at-a-glance comparison, explore the similarities and differences between Perl and PHP, and finally outline best use cases for each.

PHP vs. Perl: Overview

Both Perl and PHP have been in use for decades. When deciding between PHP vs. Perl, it's important to first have a firm grasp on what each language has to offer for web development.

What Is PHP?

PHP is a dynamic programming language that specializes in web applications and APIs. 

Originally released in 1995, PHP has evolved continuously. PHP 4 introduced its original object orientation features, which were expanded significantly in PHP 5 to provide rough parity with other object-oriented programming (OOP) languages. Currently in version 8.4, the language offers significant features for type safety, asynchronous programming, a Just-In-Time compiler, opcode caching, and a variety of other advanced features that serve as a foundation for enterprise programming applications.

PHP features an extension system, allowing users to extend the language using C/C++. Extensions have allowed the language to serve as the glue between databases, caching systems, search engines, and more, giving it immense flexibility. Ecosystem projects such as Composer provide the distribute libraries and frameworks for re-use.

PHP’s strength lies in its ease of deployment, which is boosted by a “shared nothing” architecture. This approach means that developers do not need to focus on things like garbage collection or state, making it a good fit for both entry-level developers and enterprise architects.

The Evolution of PHP

PHP changes fast – are you keeping up? Check out the Zend PHP Version Resource Collection, which provides additional information about the development of the PHP language.

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What Is Perl?

Originally developed in 1987 by Larry Wall, Perl is a general-purpose scripting language. 

Perl's purpose was to make report processing easier, and it was out of this processing that one of its primary strengths emerged: regular expression matching and substitution. (Many languages have adopted Perl-compatible regular expressions — known as PCRE — in the decades since.)

Perl earned a reputation as the “duct tape of the internet,” as it has been used heavily to automate systems and network administration. Additionally, it played a major role in the early internet as the de facto CGI scripting language.

Perl allows extension via modules, which can be written in a combination of Perl itself as well as C. The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) was one of the first general-purpose extension repositories for any language, and helped extend Perl’s popularity in the early internet era.

Is Perl Better Than PHP?

Perl is not better or worse than PHP, but it is well suited to specific uses, particularly in the GNU/Linux landscape.

Perl’s use as the de facto CGI scripting language is why it is often included in comparisons with other modern technologies such as PHP. In the history of the commercial internet, a transition from Perl CGI-BIN to PHP for dynamic responses to web requests was mostly completed by the mid 2000s. With this in mind, it’s important to remember that Perl is very important in the GNU/Linux landscape. Many packages that make GNU/Linux a coherent ecosystem rely on Perl. Rsync, imagemagick, llvm and clang, many QT-based applications, openssl, qemu, and even Git rely on Perl to deliver core functionality. 

PHP vs. Perl: At-A-Glance Comparison

Use this table for a quick-reference comparison of Perl and PHP for web applications.

Key Similarities Between Perl and PHP

PHP and Perl have similar ancestries, both deriving primarily from C and using C paradigms for much of their design. Both are considered scripting languages, and try to handle low-level tasks such as memory management and garbage collection behind the scenes so that developers can focus on the application logic and integrations.

Perl was an early favorite for internet application developers building dynamic websites, due to its built-in CGI.pm module, which transparently managed the translation between CGI (Common Gateway Interface, a protocol used by web servers to hand off web requests to applications) and the language. Its CPAN libraries, and the infamous Matt’s Script Archive, provided early tools for web application development. While not as popular in the web ecosystem today, it is still a popular language for system automation, particularly when performing tasks such as log analysis.

PHP quickly overtook Perl for web application development due to its ease of deployment and built-in, web-focused features such as form handling, file upload handling, and session management. As the language has evolved, it has focused on features that help write scalable, maintainable applications, which has allowed the development of major platforms such as WordPress and Magento.

Key Differences Between Perl and PHP

While comparing Perl and PHP does reveal many similarities, the two languages have several differences that directly impact their best use cases. These differences include performance, syntax and readability, learning curve, community support, and others.

PHP vs. Perl Performance

In PHP’s early years, it compared similarly to Perl for performance. Starting in PHP 5, a number of efforts were made to improve performance, with an opdcode cache becoming a standard part of the engine in version 5.5. From there, a lot of time and effort was put into optimizing the PHP engine going into PHP 7, with steady improvements in each release since. Additionally, PHP 8 introduced a Just-In-Time engine to the language, giving it significant performance improvements for computationally expensive mathematic operations. Today, it generally outperforms Perl by significant margins other than with regular-expressions; even there, however, since it uses PCRE as its regex engine, it compares favorably, often outperforming Perl itself.

Syntax and Readability

Both languages use “sigils” to help identify variables, notably “$”. Perl has sigils to identify different variable structural types as well, allowing you to visually distinguish between scalars/objects, hashes, and lists. Each language has a variety of control structures, including the ability to define functions/subroutines, and both support object oriented features as well.

Perl has a large number of idioms, many of which lead to what can look like line noise, with syntax such as “$_”, “@_”, etc. These have led to challenges such as “Perl Golf," where developers attempt to solve a problem using the least number of characters, and the Obfuscated Perl Contest. Because of the presence of these in the ecosystem, many characterize Perl as a “write-only” language, due to the advanced knowledge often needed to understand how a program will operate.

PHP syntax has a lot of similarities to Perl, but it has trended towards readability. Additionally, the PHP community has rallied around a small number of shared coding standards, each of which promoting readability and maintainability of code through common spacing, control structure whitespace, and more.

Learning Curve

As scripting languages, Perl and PHP are both relatively easy for developers to pick up. Because each language takes care of low-level details such as memory management, garbage collection, reference tracking, and more, the syntax of each allows developers to focus on application logic, often using idioms that roughly match natural language.

Community and Resources

Perl was notable in its early years for its dynamic and vibrant community. As noted earlier, the community has sported playful contests such as Perl Golf and the Obfuscated Perl Contest, but it is also notable for producing Perl Poetry, where a poem also acts as an executable Perl program. The community still holds conferences and has a number of user groups in cities worldwide (generally under the moniker “Perl Mongers”).

As noted earlier, Perl was one of the first languages to have a formal, community sponsored, shared software repository: the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Most frameworks, libraries, and utilities written in Perl are distributed via CPAN, which has been active online since 1995.

The PHP ecosystem has a variety of PHP user groups and conferences, as well as framework-specific user groups and conferences. In the late '00s through the 2010s, the more general ecosystem user groups and conferences were prevalent; during the 2020s, the ecosystem has trended towards framework-specific events.

Regardless, the PHP ecosystem has rallied around a single distribution tool, Composer. Composer acts as a dependency manager, as well as a tool for managing language autoloading and workflow automation. Unlike Perl’s CPAN, it was designed from the outset to allow for private or third-party repositories, providing the flexibility needed by private companies to manage and distribute their own code internally as well.

PHP vs. Perl: Best Use Cases

Perl and PHP are both versatile scripting languages, but they are tailored for different purposes and have distinct strengths. The best language for your web application will depend on your goals, business, and developer skill set.

When to Choose PHP

If you are writing a web application or web API, there is no better language than PHP. It is a standard offering on most web hosting plans, there are hundreds if not thousands of dedicated PHP hosting providers, and it has a well-known, well-regarded ease of deployment, both in terms of the runtime itself and its integration with web servers, as well as for continued deployment of the PHP application itself. Hiring a PHP developer, or training an existing developer, is easy for this same reason. The language is well documented and supported by a vibrant community.

Because PHP was developed with the web specifically in mind, it has a large amount of plumbing built into the language for handling the most common web paradigms, from serving up templated content, to handling forms and file uploads, to session management, to making web requests. Its deep integrations with a vast array of technologies, including databases, caching services, search engines, and more, mean that it can act as a glue language for the web.

When to Choose Perl

If you are doing any sort of log analysis or system automation, Perl is a fantastic choice. While not as popular today as languages like Python, it contains a plethora of text processing tools that make it easy to process large text files, application output, and more. (One expansion of the name “Perl” is “Practical Extraction and Report Language," though there are a variety of other expansions of the acronym.)

Final Thoughts

Perl and PHP are mature server-side scripting languages, but they have distinct differences in performance, syntax, and use cases. 

PHP is primarily designed for web development and offers a strong community, extensive frameworks, and excellent performance optimizations. Perl, on the other hand, was originally built for text processing and system administration tasks. While it was once a dominant language for web development, its primary use has shifted to system automation and other specific tasks versus widespread appeal. The decision between the two languages depends on the needs of your project.

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