my ($a, $b, $c) = @_; # this works

  my ($first, @rest) = @_;

> exceptions

http://search.cpan.org/~nilsonsfj/Error-TryCatch-0.07/lib/Er...

or just eval and see what the output is.

> objects

Edit: I was being an asshole Perl has a decent object system out of the box and Moose for those times when you want type constraints.

  package MyClass;
  use base 'Parent';
  
  sub new { my $class = shift; bless { prop1 => undef },   $class; }
  
  package main;

  my $obj = new MyClass;

Lexical scoping, anonymous coderefs that can be passed as data, modifiable syntax, reference semantics, and the regex engine I see other languages comparing theirs too.

    def foo(first, *rest):

    sub foo{
        my ($first, @rest) = @_;

?

  >>> def foo(first, *rest):
  ...  print first
  ...  print rest
  
  >>> foo([1,2,3])
  [1,2,3]
  ()

  sub foo {
    my ($first,@rest) = @_;
    print $first . "\n"; 
    print @rest;
  }

  foo (1,2,3);

  1
  23

It's probably my Python deficiency. My claim that Python's syntax was going to be uglier is probably wrong, but I think the claim that Perl's is appreciably worse is also wrong. We can all get along!

func set (Str $key, Int $val) {