For handling text, there is no better language than Perl. It's a great language for scripting on Unices and unix-like systems. But OOP and API oriented programm

For handling text, there is no better language than Perl. It's a great language for scripting on Unices and unix-like systems. But OOP and API oriented programming really got going in the late 90s and Python is by far a better fit for those concepts. It's probably a better language for general purpose programming altogether. However, I think languages like Perl, PHP, and Tcl get far too much grief. To quote Hemingway "Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors."