The complete story is more complicated still, as perl is able to dynamically link to "Perl" libraries compiled from other languages, including C and C++.

But this is an aside. The problem in Perl is that certain operations can only be parsed completely in the run-time context.

Consider the following, for which C has no analog (buffer overflows notwithstanding).

 my $str = $ARGV[0];
 eval("use $str;");
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Now, some theorists will complain bitterly that this must slow your code down, but this is usually the least of your problems. (See Optimising Perl.. for example)

Thog.