Perl5 is a really big language...especially when you look at extending it with the 10 gigs of CPAN code. It grew from a need to have a better Awk, but I'm not sure if they're related close enough for starting with Awk to matter. Perl6 is an all around sister language that isn't ready for production yet, but has a ton of power and features including the ability to call other languages (python, perl5, Lua, scheme).
Sure. I meant that though in the context of "I've been learning this at work as part of a get-good-at-Linux regime". Which I suppose involves using awk mostly for command pipelines / one liners. Awk and Perl would have a lot of overlap (autosplit, matching, BEGIN, END, etc) in that space.
