I think this sort of argument misses the point of my comment. I really don't want to write serious software with Perl, I want something more powerfull than AWK,

I think this sort of argument misses the point of my comment. I really don't want to write serious software with Perl, I want something more powerfull than AWK, but not as cumbersome as a more "structured" language. I literally use AWK daily for random stuff I'm most likely gonna throw away or put it in a script which I'm gonna throw away happily the moment it breaks. Sometimes, AWK is not enough, and for these usecases, in my short expirience, Perl is unmached.