I do most of my perl development on a Windows system, and it provides a big boost in capability compared to what can be achieved using batch scripting.

Probably the single biggest advantage Perl offers is the ability to easily check whether something you just did succeded.

If you want something more MSDOS like, shell scripting is the Unix equivalent. Pretty much any Unix shell will offer tools and capabilities far beyond what you are used to from MSDOS. Common shells are sh, csh, tcsh, bash, and ksh. Any of them will readily allow you to achieve better productivity than batch scripting.

Many people use Perl as a turbo-charged shell environment. In fact Perl excels at this task. For you, an big advantage of using Perl instead of shell scripting may be that you can easily run your perl scripts on Win32 systems. In my experience, the various unix shells don't work quite as well on Win32.

As an experienced programmer, if you pick up a copy of Learning Perl, you should be able to breeze through it in way less than the suggested 40 hours (that's what the edition I learned with said, I don't know what the latest version says). This site is an excellent resource for additional learning.

Good luck with the new endeavor.