Perl itself is not the problem. According to my friend, the problem comes from available tools: the ones he needs already exist for python but not for perl.

As for quick and dirty scripting in python: I do it all the time. Hell I just made a little "framework" [1] in python to do this better. I missed the while <> construct from perl for doing filters, so I made it easier to do in python. The funny thing is, many of my quick and dirty python scripts end up looking like more thought was put into them, and being more flexible, than they were ever intended to be.

[1] http://pypi.python.org/pypi?name=pyCLiFF&version=0.1&...