I was not ready for Perl until about 4 years after i was introduced to it, but now there seems to be no going back.

Very true. I wrote some horrible Perl code for 2-3 years before I even started to fully grasp it, and I'm only now feeling anywhere near confident that I'm writing decent code, nearly 5 years later. (Though I think that someone who has been exposed to other truly list oriented languages like LISP will have significantly less trouble.) And while the code I used to write is a far cry from what I can do now, I'm still nowhere close to a merlyn or Abigail.

"Powerful and dangerous" is a very good way to describe the language. You need a fair bit of excercise to wield this tool well without cutting yourself, but the sheer power of the spells a vetted Perl wizard can cast is amazing.

(Can you tell I'm totally infatuated? :) )

Makeshifts last the longest.