I understand your angle but the reason is not in the language's technicality but in the community and its culture. Most Perl speakers are seasoned hackers who are great at low level programming and use Perl when C was an overkill; their documentation skills are also noteworthy. Just my observation; I've read Perl docs (just type ('perldoc perltoc') if you're on a non-Windows box) and giggled at some of the funny remarks and admired pithy writing.