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When I learned Perl, the syntax reminded me of C and bash. The magic variables are also from bash.

Maybe because I knew C and some bash and awk, Perl wasn't alien to me at all.

Coming from a Pascal and Java background, it was a breath of fresh air. Programming was actually fun.

>>Perl and its magic variables are absolutely undecipherable if you haven't worked with the language before (or in a long time).

Yeah, either the language gives you magic variables, or you make your own one's in the programs you write. Programming isn't sorcery. Somebody has to write the code for features a language doesn't give you. That the is whole problem in essence, the more minimal your syntax goes, the more code you will write for features the language doesn't give you.

Good part about the Perl magic variables is at least they are documented.

perldoc perlvar will tell you about all the magic variables.