It's kind of like a gateway drug once you find out about CPAN ;)

It's definitely better than shell for quick file processing :) Check out this fantastic cut replacement (thanks to mjd):

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  
  my $field = shift or usage();
  $field -= 1 if $field > 0;
  
  while (<>) {
      chomp;
      my @f = split;
      print $f[$field], "\n";
  }
  
  sub usage {
      print STDERR "$0 fieldnumber\n";
      exit 1;
  }

No one will argue with you that Perl isn't better than awk, if that's the bar you've set for yourself for picking a new language to learn.

I use perl every day and awk almost every day. Awk is useful for commands where it forms a small part of an overall pipeline and needs to be somewhat terse, and yet fast. Gawk is actually fairly fast, mawk[1] even more so.

[1]: http://invisible-island.net/mawk/mawk.html

Well, there are languages I learn to improve my mind, and to improve my craft. As far as the mind goes, perl is nothing new (on the mind to-learn list: Haskell, OCaml, Eiffel, Erlang). Craftwise, it looks very useful.