....and then there's an article about Perl 7 (and many more on Perl 6)

Let's put that to bed. "Perl 6" no longer exists. It was a different language entirely and not, as the name would obviously suggest, a version of Perl. After almost 2 decades of this confusion it was finally renamed last year. The new name for that language is "raku".

Perl 7 is not yet released. It is (intended to be) a version of Perl - much the same as Perl 5 but perhaps with different defaults.

Regarding automation, I can't honestly think of a better language for that than Perl. It has the tools, the ubiquity and the thousands of relevant modules in CPAN. Have a go - you won't look back.