In perl you're never sure the operator this person is using is. Perl has operators and variables names after almost every punctuation key on the keyboard. (Pop quiz: Which punctuation keys on a standard qwerty keyboard, *aren't* valid perl variable names?) 

  

 ''True, but you don't need to know or use these variables. Just because you *can*, doesn't mean you *should* :) $! is the string message for the last error, $@/$$/$% do things with references to those data types, $# is the length of a list, $^ is magic for which OS you're on, etc etc. But not knowing this doesn't make perl any harder to use. Most punctuation also does something in C -- you're just more used to them.'' 

  

  

  

 This was ment as a random rant, as someone asked me what I disliked about perl, so I thought I'd jot a few of them down. It's not ment to be a complete critism, most of it is mostly due to my not knowing the language properly. 

  

 The thing is in perl you *can* write nice and easy to read and maintain programs, however people don't. Sure ''I'' can avoid these things, but it doesn't help me when I'm trying to debug some body ''elses'' script. C uses a lot less punctuation than perl, this is easily proven by the fact that perl uses mostly the same punctuation as C, and then adds it's own ones :) I don't think C and Perl really should be compared. They are completely different problem domains. I've got a rant growing somewhere about C too :) Compared to python, perl looks like executable line noise.