Terrence Brannon wrote:
> 
> [C]onceptually similar operations do not map to the same name 
> in Perl. Why does this make Perl a better and not worse language,
> than the intended replacement to Perl, Ruby, which is in fact highly
> regular in all places where Perl isn't [...]

Heh. Careful, there! By whom is Ruby intended to be a replacement to
Perl? ;)

Most of the responses have centered on your example, not the subject of
your question. Perl is non-orthogonal by design. From 'perldoc perl'

    "The language is intended to be practical (easy to use,
     efficient, complete) rather than beautiful (tiny, elegant,
     minimal)."

IIRC, Larry Wall has referred to Perl as being a "diagonal" language.
Instead of forcing a rigid method of doing things, Perl provides you
with options and allows you to choose the most natural (i.e. idiomatic)
method. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is largely a matter
of preference. If you want a minimal language, then it's awful. But if
you want to be able to write an arbitrary piece of code quickly and
concisely, then it's wonderful.

IMHO, orthogonality is overrated. It sounds nice on the surface, but you
invariably end up with a situation where you have to write some ugly
hack to get around the restrictions of the language.

-mjc