Your "that's not very much code" example is, in terms of a size ratio, a staggering increase in "effort". If you happen to be writing something involving a lot of tasks that compare similarly between the two languages, the difference can really pile up.
I'm afraid I don't really know anything about the Slurp module, and don't feel like looking it up right now. Thus, I can't really comment on the second example at this time.
In any case, my point was that some things are easier in PHP. Perhaps there are easier ways (or means that have roughly the same ease) to do these things in Perl, but if so, I certainly don't know them all. I suppose there's always the possibility that I'm just Wrong, and all PHP sucks ass horribly beside comparable use of Perl, but I tend to think that's not so — else the PHP language would never have been created in the first place.