> For me there is a threshold beyond which I move to AWK. Some would prefer Perl over AWK, but I cannot hold all of Perl's syntax and keywords in my brain You

> For me there is a threshold beyond which I move to AWK. Some would prefer Perl over AWK, but I cannot hold all of Perl's syntax and keywords in my brain You don't have to hold all of a language's syntax and keywords in your brain to use that language. Or even be aware of all the syntax and keywords. It's fine to just learn the subset of a language needed for the things you are going to use it for.