Is Perl *that* good? (was: How's ruby compare to it older bro ther python)

[jwsacksteder at ramprecision.com]

>>getting dynamic HTML pages up and running quickly. Perl is great for
>>its string-handling abilities. (On my Web pages, I actually call a Perl
>>script from PHP precisely for this reason.)

>I hear this more often than I understand it.  Perl certainly
>does support many string-oriented operations.  What's a speci-
>fic example, though, of an action you feel more comfortable 
>coding in external Perl?  I suspect there's something I need
>to learn about PHP's deficiencies, or Perl's power.

I suspect the perl is the first place many people get exposed
to regexes and when they understand the utility of that, some 
of the glow rubs off on perl. Someone actually said to me 
once "I program in perl because I can't live without regex."
Now when someone says "perl text-processing", I hear "regex".
(If I was motivated, I would include the above substitution in
 regex notation here...)

The php/mysql crowd gives me this feeling as well, but that's
a discussion for another day and another list.