Awk is too specialized, specific. Perl is amazing at text processing AND also amazing at much more. The basics of perl for basic awk-like functionality is really not much to learn. Skip awk and learn something more useful.

This works because perl is layered. To do even fairly elaborate awk-like text processing you only need to learn a little perl. Nothing like all of perl. To do the rest (of elaborate text processing), you learn a little more. In the end, most likely you never need to learn all of perl. But it's there to add to your toolbox as needed as you go.