Indeed. Coming from UNIX tools (sed/awk/sh/grep/tr etc), perl had a lot of appeal and almost intuitive syntax - alternatives in the '80s being C, awk, or if you were unlucky, FORTRAN IV without string type :-). The benefit of having a single language with all of the functionality of these tools was amazing at the time and ability to use familiar syntax was a benefit. However expectations for programming languages grew somewhat since...