[erikb]

Why is AWK or SED not easy?

So yeah. There are a few languages which are quite good at text parsing nowadays. Another key argument was the huge amount of packages. But most languages have that now. There are also lots of scripting languages who can be written quite fast, like Python or Ruby. That's what I mean with there is not a single thing left that you really need or want to use Perl for beside having used it the last decade already. For everything that Perl can do there is at least another tool that is as good.

But all of that is not a shame. Every language will go that path, especially one that is so common as Perl was. Everybody wants to copy the best, until one day it's not the best anymore.