Perl est un esprit LISP dans un corps C, n'est-ce pas? :-)
-- Philippe Verdret

(Note: "corps C" sounds like "corset" in French.)

That's the essence, basically. It looks like bog-standard imperative programming when you start out - the more you move down the line, the more functional programming enters the picture though. map, closures, slices, and more, they all contribute to the picture. The closer you get there, the more concise but simple your code will become. (If it's getting shorter but more cryptic, you're doing something wrong.)

Makeshifts last the longest.