Test Automation is now my job, and I can tell you that my tasks are much easier accomplished with Perl than any of the other languages I have been using which include TCL\Expect, and VB (*shudder*), as well as a couple proprietary ones: Visual Test, based on VB and WinRunner, based loosly on C.
I still use the others for tasks which they are superior for but everything is glued together with Perl and Perl is the bulk of my new code.