"Perl Golf" is a game that monks and wizards like to play, wherein you try to come up with the solution to a problem in the fewest characters possible. It often starts from a very basic question, in order to break up the boredom of helping newbies. One can occasionally learn nifty tricks from golfing, but it's mostly just playing.
Obfu was also mentioned, which is short for obfuscation, or the writing of intentionally hard to read code. Perl's flexibility certainly makes it possible to write extremely obfuscated code (especially when done intentionally) - click on the obfuscation link, probably near the top of this very page, for some nifty examples.
-- Kirby | [reply] |