Is Perl *that* good?

[Paramjit Oberoi]

>> if myregex.match(line):
>>    xyz = myregex.lastm.group('xyz')
> 
> Hmm.  The reason this hasn't been done is that it makes the match
> method non-reentrant.  For example, suppose you call some functions in
> between the matching and use of the matched object, like this:

Another thing in perl that makes regexes convenient is the 'default'
variable $_.  So, maybe the following could be done:

line_a = re.compile(...)
line_b = re.compile(...)

rx = re.context()
for rx.text in sys.stdin:
    if rx(line_a).match():
        total += a_function() + rx[1]
    elif rx(r'^msg (?P<text>.*)$').match():
        print rx['text']
    elif rx(line_b).match(munge(text)):
        print 'munged text matches'

    // similarly rx.{search, sub, ...}

But, as Peter Hansen pointed out, maybe this is more suited to a personal
utility module...  What are the considerations for whether something
should or shouldn't be in the standard library?