After you've been doing Perl for awhile you'll probably never want to see the C-for loop again. Perl style and idioms might be a little jarring at first but they are very readable once you get used to them and, I argue, lead toward more compact code in the loops which, for me, is easier to follow and debug. I'd rather see 5 lines of good/common idiom than 20 lines of plodding obviousness.... The more dense one is actually easier to focus on and not miss things, for me, anyway.