Original Matlab had nothing to do with Perl. However Matlab has two nice properties that make it a good match with Perl. Matlab is a scripting language similar to Perl. You generate a text document with all the commands then “run” the file from within the Matlab environment. You could also compile the scripts you generate into an executable.

So the marriage between Matlab and Perl is obvious. Text scripts could be easily manipulated with Perl. Making script generation simpler, and convertion of scripts into executables is easier.

As a side note. If you are doing any major number crunching especially with anything in matrix format you should consider Matlab. It can generate graphical user interfaces, model any type of mechanical system, and as Perl specializes in text manipulation Matlab specializes in matrix manipulation.