I take it you've never done much shell scripting? This part of perl's baggage comes from its roots as a "better" shell/awk/sed. I don't like it any more than you do, but I must say, I wish people would reserve some of the vitriol they have for perl for the shell. Because I gotta tell you Rabbi, perl is a hell of a lot better than shell scripts. And that's even if you compare perl4 (1991-1994 or so?) to the very latest bash or zsh.
edit:
BTW if $| is really at risk of clashing with a variable you defined... something else is wrong. :)
Compare that with the shell, where names like IFS can do unimaginable things if you don't know about them and set them by mistake. (Or maliciously; it's imported directly from the environment, and stuff like this is why shell scripts can basically never be given untrusted input, whereas perl, with the 'taint' option, can.)
Reflecting on all this it's pretty sad that newbies in 2020 are encouraged to learn bash, and continue creating arcane, unreadable, booby-trap-laden scripts in it, all the while looking down their nose at perl.
edit:
BTW if $| is really at risk of clashing with a variable you defined... something else is wrong. :)
Compare that with the shell, where names like IFS can do unimaginable things if you don't know about them and set them by mistake. (Or maliciously; it's imported directly from the environment, and stuff like this is why shell scripts can basically never be given untrusted input, whereas perl, with the 'taint' option, can.)
Reflecting on all this it's pretty sad that newbies in 2020 are encouraged to learn bash, and continue creating arcane, unreadable, booby-trap-laden scripts in it, all the while looking down their nose at perl.