I was getting into regular expressions a bit and discovered that Perl has some esoteric qualities that could lend itself to be a powerful tool in the fight against evil. As monks, it is our duty to use Perl as a force for good. Here is a quick and dirty script, with not much flexibility for now to allow automation, but it calculates an interesting number. :) Radagast 
#!/usr/bin/perl

# Have a little fun.  Type a name, let the program extract the Roman
# numerals in them, and add them up.  The letter V was used instead of
# U so that conversion will be done here.
#
# To verify this works, type CUTE PURPLE DINOSAUR to test it and the n
+umber
# output will be 666.

$name = "";
$strLen = 0;
$sum = 0;

print "Enter name: ";
while (<STDIN>) {
    chomp;
    $strLen = length $_;
    tr/a-z/A-Z/;
    tr/U/V/;
    @arr = split //;
    for ($i = 0; $i < $strLen; $i++) {
        if ($arr[$i] =~ /I|V|X|L|C|D|M/)
        {
            $sum += RtoD($arr[$i]);
        }
    }
    if ($sum == 666) {
        markOfTheBeast();
        last;
    } else {
        print "The number is $sum...blessed be!\n";
    }
    $sum = 0;
    print "Enter name: ";
}

sub RtoD {
    $X = shift;

    if ($X =~ /i|I/) {
        return 1;
    } elsif ($X =~ /v|V/) {
        return 5;
    } elsif ($X =~ /l|L/) {
        return 50;
    } elsif ($X =~ /c|C/) {
        return 100;
    } elsif ($X =~ /d|D/) {
        return 500;
    } elsif ($X =~ /m|M/) {
        return 1000;
    } else {
        return 0;
    }
}

sub markOfTheBeast {
    system "clear";
    print <<END_OF_DAYS
*********************************************************************
*YOU HAVE EXPOSED THE SIGN OF THE BEAST.  PLEASE REDEEM YOUR GET OUT*
*  OF HELL FREE CARD AT THE NEAREST STARBUCKS OR PORTAL TO HELL TO  *
*                  AVOID THE ONCOMING APOCALYPSE.                   *
*********************************************************************
END_OF_DAYS
}

[download]
UPDATE: Sorry about the unwieldiness of the code. For example, I'd love to have combined the searches

In reply to Perl as a Holy Weapon? by radagast

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