Because as a PHP programmer Perl will have areas of familiarity which may make the learning process easier. In return, you will gain a greater appreaciation fo

Because as a PHP programmer Perl will have areas of familiarity which may make the learning process easier. In return, you will gain a greater appreaciation for why the PHP developers made the decisions they did by seeing how it was done in a language they borrowed heavily from. As a bonus you'll learn to use a language that is ubiquitous in all sorts of sysadmin tasks, and have another tool that you can use when PHP isn't the right one for the job. Finally, knowing Perl will allow you to use the huge wealth of CPAN modules available to help you solve almost any task. At worst it will enable you to port them to your language of choice.