Perl is listed in the almost there list for auto-vivification and "if" as a statment modifier.

I'm afraid using "if" as a statement modifier was available in several other languages, e.g. Pop-11, before Perl existed. So that's one off the list :-)

Perl's not really much of a language innovator - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a language feature-aggregator and populariser.