For instance, for the first time in 15+ years, I recently had a reason to use Perl's half-deprecated, off-handedly-included form printing support, and, you know what? It's really nice if that's what you want. Many dozens of lines of code replaced by what is basically a picture of what I want.
Python is a great language, but every once in a while "explicit is better than implicit", which is generally a philosophy I agree with wholeheartedly, results in a lot more "explicit", in the form of "code I had to write", than you might be looking for. (Or, alternatively, you start writing Python that is a lot more implicit, which isn't exactly a huge victory for Python here.)
Nowadays I'd also suggest that if you find yourself having a lot of those tasks, you need to ask some questions about how you're storing your data. But pretty much everybody ends up with some of these somewhere; it's hard to eliminate them, and not really worth it (due to diminishing returns).
so I just installed perl 5 and did it my usual way. But if I didn't know Perl already it would be a non-option. it's just not a language anymore, it's a legacy thing that if you already learned you can sometimes still use.
An younger developer may think differently, but I do think the 'Perl' brand is already too damaged for surviving the transition, even if Perl6 is better than modern languages (what I didn't see anybody claiming yet).
instead use something with a cross-platform interface (Python, Chrome or Lua, whatever), compile your own executable or use a compiler that targets bash.
besides, it is only a matter of time before the systemd trojan invades this area, and your newly acquired skills will be obsolete </sarcasm>.
Python is a good alternative as well.