Hacker News Reader

perl has the best regex, or one of the best, also it is the only other language other than python which is installed by default in common distros afaik

If you feel unproductive or uncomfortable with Perl, you should avoid it and use whatever language strikes your fancy.

Many people however are extremely comfortable and productive with Perl, for a wide variety of reasons. It's really an awesome language that has proven its vast usefulness a long time ago.

Perl is usually my goto language for that sort of task. It has loads of built in features for interacting with the system.