I like to use perl for jobs that need to be solved quickly, sometimes it's easier to boot right into a shell prompt and write the script straigt into the interpreter for a quick result than it is to compile a job. Perl also seems to be, as brought to my attention by the Sams Learn Perl in 24 Hours, an excellent scripting language for prototyping a job that will eventally be compiled in something like C, especially with it's syntax being close to that of C's. And besides, it's another thing to put on a resume :).