Perl 5 is old, but reliable. Many people deride it as a write-only language or executable line noise, but you can write ugly code in any language.

Perl 5 can be terse or verbose depending on your needs. It is not "one size fits all" like Python, it fits many different sizes depending on your needs (TIMTOWTDI).

You also have tons of modules available via CPAN, so you can get a script done quickly.

Don't get me wrong: I use Python too, but some systems only have Python 2 and Python's significant white space can be problematic at times. Perl is an old, reliable camel that you can trust to get you through your problem desert quickly, frequently before the Python caravan has started out.