psss...I want to move from Perl to Python

[Fillmore]

I learned myself Perl as a scripting language over two decades ago. All 
through this time, I would revert to it from time to time whenever I 
needed some text manipulation and data analysis script.

My problem? maybe I am stupid, but each time I have to go back and 
re-learn the syntax, the gotchas, the references and the derefercing, 
the different syntax between Perl 4 and Perl 5, that messy CPAN in which 
every author seems to have a different ideas of how things should be 
done....

I get this feeling I am wasting a lot of time restudying the wheel each 
tim...

I look and Python and it looks so much more clean....

add to that that it is the language of choice of data miners...

add to that that iNotebook looks powerful....

Does Python have Regexps?

How was the Python 2.7 vs Python 3.X solved? which version should I go for?

Do you think that switching to Python from Perl is a good idea at 45?

Where do I get started moving from Perl to Python?

which gotchas need I be aware of?

Thank you