PHP is "worse" in these respects when compared to other mainstream languages, yes - we can probably grant that, although it's not as bad as it once was.
Perl is just one big game of code golf. There is absolutely an entire era of developers who looked at that and ran far away (and I do not blame them at all).
"one big game of code golf" would probably be a decision by the author, wouldn't it? I know a person or two who could fall into that category, but it's hardly the fault of the language.
No, this is specifically a comment on the syntactical choices often found in Perl codebases and the penchant for brevity that is common in that community.
Perl is just one big game of code golf. There is absolutely an entire era of developers who looked at that and ran far away (and I do not blame them at all).