Are regexps readable? Is sed/awk readable? xpath?

Perl is a power tool. The reason it can be unreadable is because of it's terse syntax, wherein resides its power. If you value readability above power then you choose Java, and I would agree that for a large enterprise app developed by an army of mediocre developers then Java is surely the better choice. However to judge the absolute merits of a language like Perl on reputed readability, without taking into consideration what its terseness allows, and how it works for large scale development given a sane coding standard is just burying your head in the sand.