Perl fanbois can get quite idiotic, bash PHP, and bash PHP programmers, when it's they who are bad PHP programmers.

mysql_query(sprintf("UPDATE foo SET age='%d' WHERE id='%s'", $age, $id));

That's the equivalent to Perl's. And BTW, you shouldn't be calling mysql_query directly. Instead, use a DB abstraction layer, like ADODB, PDO, etc.

So stop bullshitting and learn proper PHP first if you want to point out its flaws.