I strongly agree. I don't follow Perl, but I have long thought "I'll have a look when Perl 6 gets stable, not a lit off point looking at Perl 5, it's old and going to disappear soon anyway."

At this point, I suspect the gap which would be filled by Perl for me is already filled by python. But if I had a firm feeling that Perl 5/7 was not going to be eclipsed by Perl 6, I would be tempted to give it a try, mainly because I have found python is not a good replacement for grep/awk/find/xargs, and I suspect Perl might fit that niche better.

What is the best way to learn "modern Perl"? Or am I better off learning "old Perl"?