Been a while since I have posted here, Cat may not be what the OP was asking for directly, but it is evolving into something that I think will allow perl compete with the languages du jour. I don't think that perl's ability to handle text and pattern matching or other glue app usages have ever been in question, but where perl has been lacking is web based toolkits. Cat, for me, has allowed me to continue using my favorite language without having to make excuses for it. Perl 6 may or may not be a huge long term boon to our language of choice, but toolkits that allow us to compete with ruby, python, php seem like a good starting point. The point that I think is missed most of the time is that a lot of these languages or toolkits learned from the mistakes that perl made in the past and tried to smooth the bumps in the road. There is no reason we cant leap frog them in this regard.