Mark Berkwitt wrote:
> I'm considering learning Perl but I don't know what Perl will give me.

I was waiting for someone to give him The Answer but I haven't seen it
(low caffeine just now tho'):

Perl gives you a Swiss-Army Chainsaw.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Swiss-Army-chainsaw.html

It pops up a lot with security testing (or application abusing). 
Suppose you want to find out what happens if you send 2000 nulls to port
X?  Use Perl.  I'm *not* a Perl programmer, but I occasionally use it as
a quickie replacement for a C program.  It's on my short list of "stuff
to learn more about" :-)

Steve