I also find it one of the least readable language. Or more precisely, the language that requires the most effort to be made readable. Every language can be made unreadable.

But it is also one of the most writable language. In Perl, for most problems, there is a quick and dirty way of addressing it. It is especially true when it comes to processing text files, the thing that Perl is best known for.

Many languages try to be clean and consistent, it is obviously good for readability, but it means that choices have to be made. Sometimes the best way is the "wrong" way and you have to fight against the language. Perl solved that problem by not having a "wrong" way of doing things, screw cleanliness and consistency.

Also, first class regex are awesome for quick and dirty text processing.