Perl[#!perl!#] is a scripting language with many characteristics of Tcl: it is designed for high-level control over arbitrary input, its syntax is designed around the string data type, and its support for data types is nearly identical- associative arrays, scalar variables, and arrays of scalars (which are similar to Tcl lists).
Perl lacks embeddability, and so fails to a large degree to serve as a high-level control language. Note, however, that Perl does support arbitrary inter-process communication (IPC), so applications which can talk in this way can interface with Perl using this facility.
Perl is compiled on demand each time the script is loaded.