Back in the day, Mandrake (now Mandriva) chose Perl as the language to write all their system configuration tools with. They even wrote console counterparts to their tools integrating ncurses with Perl. It became one of the easiest to use and most popular of all Linux distros. Mageia and PCLinuxOS still use Mandriva as a base for their own respective distros because those tools are so good. Those distros are prolly the best resources for anyone wanting to learn Perl and is looking for Perl source examples to study. The Linux game 'Frozen Bubbles' is written also with Perl. Lots of graphics and animation. Perl is not the dog to throw rocks at.

Compared to small bash scripts and one-liners you could say Perl 'falls down' because it gobbles resourses. It's argued that it's not the best choice in that arena, and I agree. Shell scripts do have their place. But when it comes to gathering and reporting data, which is what the script in the first post is all about, or interfacing with humans, like the examples given above, I argue that Perl does it better (and faster) than any shell script could, at least any that I've ever seen.

P.S.
With respect to the shell's versatility, notice that Chubler_XL took the time and went to the trouble of converting the OPs script (post #19). Good job Chubler_XL. Whether it will handle just about any kind of data you throw at it remains to be seen.

Cheers