Have yet to learn Perl, but I've frequently not seen it preinstalled on systems, and additionally you sometimes need CPAN to be able to run scripts. awk might n

Have yet to learn Perl, but I've frequently not seen it preinstalled on systems, and additionally you sometimes need CPAN to be able to run scripts. awk might not be as powerful, but at least you know it's small, self-contained, and likely to be available in some form on most systems. That's part of its value I think... likely a consequence of not trying to do as much.