Perl

Perl 5.40 (2024) introduced a native try/catch and the __CLASS__ keyword. It remains unbeatable for text processing one-liners.

When to Use

• Text Processing: Regex engine is the gold standard.
• Sysadmin: Legacy scripts on every Unix system.
• Bioinformatics: Massive existing codebases (Bioperl).

Core Concepts

Sigils

$scalar, @array, %hash. Visual typing.

Context

Scalar vs List context. my $len = @arr (count) vs my. ($first) = @arr (element).