There is monumental material on this in sites like Perlmonks.

I started writing a detailed reply, but half way down I realized it might become a booklet project[Which is a very good project idea by the way]

I also realized I may not be able to justice to 3 decades of Perl history in one HN comment.

So the best I can do is point you out to two links.

http://hop.perl.plover.com/ and http://onyxneon.com/books/modern_perl/

Perl is a great tool for scripting, but calling it "unmatched" is hard to justify. Knowing Python or Ruby well, you can be efficient scripting with them, and that's what scripting is all about, getting the job done fast.

Higher Order Perl is one of the best books I've read, but I feel that's much more about software development than scripting, teaching the fundamental techniques in functional programming.

So in order to be convinced that Perl is a force to take seriously, we need to read two entire books?

Short answer: python is perl for bureaucrats and computer scientists. Ruby is perl for people who realised php is awful.

Perl fits the same niche as English does for natural language - used everywhere, easy to learn for simple cases,very tough to master. The way I like to say it is that while most programming languages help you think more like the computer, perl helps the computer think more like you do.

In order to convinced about anything, you need to read documentation. And you need to learn how to read it well.

I've read the awk and sed man pages so many times, yet everytime I have to type a command I have to read it again.

Those books look pretty general. Could you perhaps give just one or two examples which make Perl great specifically for scripting, to someone who does not know any Perl at all?

I was really just asking for a couple of short examples of scripts that demonstrate your point, based on Perl as it is now, not anything regarding its history.